What have the mining companies done for us?

There's a wonderful scene in Monty Python's "The Life Of Brian" where Reg, the leader of the People's Front of Judea (not to be confused with the Judean People's Front) asks "What have the Romans ever done for us?". To his annoyance, his fellow rebels answer, eventually leading to Reg having to reword his rhetorical question:

All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

What makes this even more brilliant is that the benefits of Roman civilization on conquored people have very likely been enormously exaggerated. Ex-Python Terry Jones' book (and television series) Barbarians makes a very strong case that, whatever benefits Roman conquest had (if any!), they were enormously outweighed by the harm done. The Romans were not benevolent conquorers bringing civilization to the benighted savages, they were rapacious looters who drained the wealth from half of Europe and the Middle East and left the conquered people vastly poorer.

Which brings us to Australia in the 21st century. In the same way that the conventional story of Europe is that the Romans brought civilization to the barbarians, Australia's conventional story is that in the late 20th and early 21st century (that is, right now) the mining boom brought wealth and prosperity to our land. But, like the story of Rome's civilizing influence, the story starts to fall apart when you look a little more closely at it. Australia's mining boom has come with enormous costs, not just environmental and political but economic as well, and the wealth generated has mostly gone to a relatively small number of people.

Compared to the resource curse suffered by many developing nations, Australia has escaped relatively unscathed. We don't have warlords and private armies fighting for control over our gold and coal mines. But our all-but-unshakable belief that we are The Lucky Country blessed with natural resources, together with our cultural cringe that nothing we do is as good as what the Pommy Bastards and Damn Yanks can do (even though we're the best bloody country on earth bar none), has made us complacent. With a tiny handful of exceptions, the national character is not just uninnovative but anti-innovation. We give lip-service to loving our inventors and innovators, but except for medical research we just don't want to know. We celebrate the Aussie inventor who builds a better mousetrap, but won't buy it until it's been sold to the Americans for a fraction of what it's worth, then sold back to us at an enormous profit margin.

We have the scientific know-how and the popular support to lead the world in green energy. If Germany can now generate fifty percent of its peak daytime electrical power from solar and wind, we could surely be doing eighty or ninety percent without even raising a sweat. But we lack the political will. Of our two main political parties, the nominally left-wing (but actually middle-of-the-road centre) ALP is lukewarm about green energy, while the right-wing (and getting more extreme every day) Liberal Party is now actively hostile to it. It's not hard to see why: mining companies are big, big supporters of the Libs. Since 2007, for every dollar the mining companies have given the ALP, they have given $25.75 to the Liberals. No wonder Joe "poor people don't drive cars" Hockey thinks that wind power is utterly offensive. In Queensland, Australia's "Deep North", the even more right-wing National Party are trying desperately to destroy the solar power industry because it is too effective.

So what have the mining companies done for Australia? Apart from making us complacent and corrupting our political process?

• Not jobs. Mining provides about 1% of Australia's jobs, compared to about 9% employed by the manufacturing sector.
• They're quick to shed jobs too. If the rest of the country sacked people as quickly as the mining companies did, our unemployment rate would have reached 19.5% during the global financial crisis instead of 5.9%.
• Not taxes either. Despite record profits, they pay only around 2/3rds the tax rate of other companies: the average company tax rate in Australia is 21% but the mining companies pay only 14%.
• Not only don't they pay their fair share of taxes, they're quick to demand handouts. Despite all their profits, they receive $500 million in direct subsidies each year, plus another $4000 million in indirect subsidies, freebies, discounts and other handouts.
• The diesel fuel subsidy alone costs every Australian (at least those who paid taxes) $87 a year.
• They're not Aussie miners either. 83% of Australia's mining industry is foreign owned, which means that up to 83% of the profits are going overseas.
• Let's not forget the environmental destruction caused by mining.

All right, but apart from the pollution, the corruption, the lies, the destroyed industries, the sense of entitlement, and the lost opportunities, what have the miners ever done for us?

Why loony leftists matter

The consequences of giving power to the far-left -- whether the loonies in the London city council, Politically-Correct socialists in the ivory tower of macademia[1] or the genocidal criminals in Soviet Russia and Cambodia -- has been baneful and calamitous. As James Wimberley of the Reality Based Community says:

The record of these people in power is so disastrous that it would be tempting to wish them gone, as has more or less happened in the USA. Tempting but wrong. Like the gene for sickle-cell anaemia, the far left plays a useful irritating and balancing role, so long as it stays in a permanent minority.

I'm a great believer in the value, no, the necessity, of a few irritating trouble-makers, malcontents and enfants terrible who can stop us from becoming complacent, arrogant and self-satisfied. In the late 1800s and first few decades of the 1900s, capitalism was scared of communist revolution. Marxism was still a vigorous intellectual paradigm. The workers were flexing their muscles and demanding improved working conditions, better conditions and a measure of justice. Consequently, those hard-hearted and selfish capitalist leaders feared for their profits and their lives, and (eventually, reluctantly) modified their behaviour, and so the 20th century saw massive improvements in quality of life for those who weren't at the top of the social pyramid: pensions, universal health insurance and education, the 40 (or even 38) hour week, holiday pay, unfair dismissal laws and much more.

But in countries like the USA, where the masses turned their backs on unions and swallowed the lie that class warfare is by definition the lazy and envious poor against the deserving rich, things are very different. It seems like at least half the country -- even many of those going hungry because of medical expenses -- believes that having the government use its massive purchasing power to buy medicine at a discount is one tiny step away from outlawing private property and sending everyone to the gulag. Far-right wingers pose as centrists and moderate right-wingers are vilified as communists. Consequently, the fat cats in the capitalist classes have been behaving like the fox in the henhouse for decades now, with crisis following bubble every couple of years. Every crisis is followed by an even bigger one, and those perpetrating the disasters get rewarded each time. After losing inconceivably large amounts of money, the banks have gone to the US government begging for bailouts. No social safety net for the tellers, but the CEOs and executives get to give themselves massive pay rises.


And why not? What have they got to be scared of? The working class in the US is convinced that all they need is a couple of lucky breaks and they too will be as rich as Bill Gates, or at least comfortably middle-class, when the reality is that income inequality has exploded over the last thirty years. It's not clear whether the current economic crisis will level things out again, or simply punish those who work for a living while allowing the mega-rich even more opportunity to buy up assets. A lot will depend on moral outrage, and very few people do moral outrage over pigs-at-the-trough like old-school leftists. So let's give three cheers for the Loyal Opposition of Loony Leftists, may they prosper, but not too much, just enough to keep the bastards honest.




[1] Caution: May Contain Nuts. Back

Not all democracies are equal

One of the defining myths of the second half of the 20th century, and the start of the 21st, is that by slapping the label "Democratic" on a system of government, it magically becomes good.

It's part of the lazy thinking that judges books by their cover, the self-satisfied idea that because we live in a democracy we can do no wrong, and of course it is cynically encouraged by the Bad Guys who know damn well that democracy just means you get to vote, not what happens either before or after the vote. People voted for the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein, and by memory he won 98% of the popular vote.

Saddam was a strong man who didn't feel the need to be subtle in his stealing of elections. In the West, we have a long tradition of quietly subverting the popular vote, from gerrymanders to super-delegates to outright ballot-stuffing. As Boss Tweed said, "I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating." Or for that matter, counting the votes. And if that fails, well, it's nice to have some friendly Supreme Court judges rule against the need to actually bother counting the votes. (In the words of Justice Scalia, counting the votes fairly and carefully would threaten "irreparable harm" to Bush "by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election." Got that? Actually having a fair election is a Bad Thing, because that would challenge Bush's public claim that he won in a fair election.)

But generally, despite the flaws, Western post-WW2 democracy manages to mostly be good, at least compared to dictatorships and faux-democracies in the developing world. More or less -- mostly more, with occasional less.

But the illusion that democracy implies goodness is dangerous. Over in Iraq, one of the former members of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), John Agresto, was tasked with rebuilding the country's education system. (Sadly, the CPA neglected to actually give him any money to do it with.) Agresto bitterly wrote:

America's been so successful at being a free and permanent democracy that we think democracy is the natural way to rule--just let people go and there you have it: Democracy. But all the ingredients that make it good and free--limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, calendared elections, staggered elections, plurality selection, differing terms of office, federalism with national supremacy, the development of a civic spirit and civic responsibility, and above all, the breaking and moderating of factions--all this we forgot about. We act is if the aim is "democracy" simply and not a mild and moderate democracy. Therefore...we seek out the loudest and most virulent factions and empower them...

We, as a country, don't have a clue as to what has made our own country work, and so we spread the gospel of democracy-at-all-costs abroad. Until this country can find a Madison, it would be far better off with just a good ruler.

[Emphasis added.]

The theological necessity of goats

Thanks to PZ Myers, I hear that Texas is hearing legal arguments concerning the theological necessity of goats related to a priest's argument that if he is prohibited from sacrificing live goats his god will cease to exist.

(And that would be a bad thing, why?)

In related news, the British government has taken blasphemy off the books, and a Malaysian woman has been jailed for worshiping a giant tea pot. No, seriously. It seems that while Malaysia has laws permitting freedom of worship, it also has sharia laws which prohibit apostasy. See here for more.

Now that's a thought... one way that Obama could gain the redneck vote would be to remind everyone that millions of Muslims will be absolutely shattered to learn that the son of an apostate is the most powerful man on Earth. Oh my.

The clique that is American politics

American politics is strongly family oriented. I don't mean that politicians care about families, or at least say they do. I mean that there are these enormous political dynasties that are based on a handful of families.

The Kennedy family. The Bushes. The Clintons. John Kerry and George W Bush are related. And Barack Obama is Dick Cheney's cousin.

Not surprisingly, there are those who consider the US to be more of an oligarchy than a true democracy:

According to this school of thought, modern democracies should be considered as elected oligarchies. In these systems, actual differences between viable political rivals are small, the oligarchic elite impose strict limits on what constitutes an 'acceptable' and 'respectable' political position, and politicians' careers depend heavily on unelected economic and media elites.

Sounds like American politics to me. And to a lesser extent, Australian.

I think it is a fine thing that Americans are seriously considering a black man whose father was raised a Muslim but became an atheist for president, but why am I not surprised to learn that he's not quite so much of an outsider as he appeared at first glance?

Speaking of the incestuousness of the ruling class, did you know that Queen Elizabeth II is directly descended from the prophet Mohammad?

Mixed in with Queen Elizabeth's blue blood is the blood of the Moslem prophet Mohammed, according to Burke's Peerage, the geneological guide to royalty. The relation came out when Harold B. Brooks-Baker, publishing director of Burke's, wrote Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to ask for better security for the royal family. ''The royal family's direct descent from the prophet Mohammed cannot be relied upon to protect the royal family forever from Moslem terrorists,'' he said. Probably realizing the connection would be a surprise to many, he added, ''It is little known by the British people that the blood of Mohammed flows in the veins of the queen. However, all Moslem religious leaders are proud of this fact.''

A reminder

When it comes to politics, it's easy to spend all your time blogging about bad news. But it's important to remember that although politics can be dominated by venal, short-sighted and selfish motives, it doesn't have to be.

In 1978, the Principality of Liechtenstein was admitted to the Council of Europe, which gave it the right to nominate a judge to the European Court of Human Rights. Their nominated judge was the eminent Canadian jurist, the late Ronald St. John Macdonald, the only non-European appointed to the Court. MacDonald served on the Court for 18 years and was succeeded by the Swiss human rights lawyer, Mark Villiger. To quote James Wimberley:

Liechtenstein thus set a truly revolutionary precedent for staffing international bodies simply with the most qualified people.

Secret Service versus the candidates

Why isn't the Secret Service protecting Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?

Among other duties, the Secret Service is responsible for protecting America's presidential candidates. But something strange has happened this electoral campaign: the Secret Service has started letting people into Clinton and Obama rallies without being screened for weapons or even given a visual check.

The story first broke when the Dallas police force publicly questioned the orders they were given to stop screening, but it's since come out that, this campaign, it's been standard Secret Service policy for all of Clinton's and Obama's rallies: set up metal detectors and screen the crowd, then at some arbitrary point stop and let everyone else in.

The Secret Service has admitted that this is standard procedure, although there's been no word on whether they apply the same procedure to Republican candidates. They certainly don't apply it to public appearances by Bush and Cheney, nor did they apply them during the 2004 presidential elections.

There have already been death threats against Obama. The Secret Service initially took them so seriously that he was given Secret Service protection earlier than any other candidate in American history.

Comparisons are odious

Especially when they don't support the myth that conservatives are better for the economy.



(Via Brad De Long.)

Adventures in hypocrisy, part eleventy bazillion

Remember the Turkish invasion of northern Iraq that Turkey denied they made?

Seems that Junior Prez Dubyah Bush has something to say about that. Namely, that Turkey shouldn't ignore the will of the international community and that they better leave Iraq right now, terrorists or no terrorists. Pretty please. Or something like that.

Earlier, Turkey admitted that they had 10,000 troops battling the Kurdish terrorists. Naturally, the elephant in the room that the media doesn't want to mention is that northern Iraq has been under US and UK protection since the first Gulf War ended in 1991, and even today, the US is sheltering the Kurdish independence groups who have been committing terrorist attacks against Turkey.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said:

It's very important that the Turks make this operation as short as possible and then leave, and to be mindful of Iraqi sovereignty.

It would be nice to say that his words were received with peals of laughter, or even stunned silence, but such is the irony-free 21st century that they were probably accepted as self-evidently true. Some things never change.

I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq.
-- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, primary architect of the US invasion of Iraq, speaking on 21 July 2003.

Three links

Three interesting miscellaneous links:

Can the Cavendish banana be saved from extinction? (No.) Can the fruit growers create a new variety acceptable to the American market? (Probably not.)

The town of Brattleboro, Vermont, has tabled a motion authorizing the local cops to arrest Bush and Cheney if they come into the town.

A leaked British government document shows that they intend to coerce the population into giving up their privacy.

Why don't more conservatives go to university?

Why are most university professors liberal? Two academics, Matthew Woessner and April Kelly-Woessner, have done a study that suggests that most conservatives simply aren't interested in the sorts of things that attract people to academic careers. Matthew Woessner himself is an interesting counter-example: he's a fan of Fox New, Rudy Giuliani and Rush Limbaugh and usually votes Republican, and unlike most of the conservative students he has studied, has a deep interest in the scientific method. (Although he clearly doesn't apply it to Fox, Giuliani or Limbaugh...)

The Agonist has this to say:

What do you do when there are not enough laissez-fare loving, personal responsibility professing and family values fundies at your university? You make it more socialist:

The research led the Woessners to conclude that if higher education wants to attract more conservatives to the professoriate, it should smooth the way financially, offering subsidized health insurance and housing for graduate students

I've often thought that conservative politics simply meant "handouts for me, not for thee".

Read more here.

Taking back democracy

Sick of the Republican Party trying to block them from voting, students at Prairie View A&M University in Texas decided to take back democracy one street at a time: literally.

Faced with systematic efforts to disenfranchise blacks and Democrat supporters, such as putting polling places seven miles away from the voting precinct, more than 3,000 students took to the highway, blocking it as they walked the seven miles to the polling place.

Nice one guys!

Does the USA need a stupider motto?

Thanks to Terrifel from the Straight Dope message boards:

1956 was of course the worst year that the United States had ever faced. Wracked by turmoil and social upheaval, beset by enemies within and without, the nation thrashed about like a dying, constipated beast. Whole cities crumbled into ruin amid the chaos as American society teetered on the very brink of collapse. The horror of that time has made the name of Eisenhower synonymous with anarchy even to this day. My father would never talk about how he and his family survived those grim times.

Fortunately, in the very nick of time, legislators realized the true cause of the crisis: America's national motto wasn't stupid enough. Like all of the country's other woes, this disaster could ultimately be traced back to that most sinister of Americans, Thomas Jefferson. The same treacherous impulses that led him to betray his rightful King also inevitably prompted him to sabotage the fledgling nation by giving it the worst possible state motto: E pluribus unum. Not only was this an unforgivably pompous classical reference, its subversive message-- "out of many, one--" would result in a catastrophic tradition of escalating tolerance and unity that was doomed to tear the country apart in less than two hundred years.

Read more.

I think it is time to change the motto from "In God We Trust" to "Try And Stop Us". Or perhaps "Are You Looking At Me?".

Don't mess with the geeks

What happens when a clueless US senator pretending to run his own MySpace webpage hires clueless web developers to do the job for him?

In an attempt to prove how 21st century he is, 70-year-old Senator John McCain hired web developers to create his MySpace page. Unfortunately, they hotlinked to the wrong person's files.

When Mike Davidson learnt that McCain was "stealing" his bandwidth, he decided to play a little joke on the Republican senator:

'I think the idea of politicians setting up MySpace pages and pretending to actually use them is a bit disingenuous, so I figured it was time to play a little prank on Johnny Mac.'

Davidson replaced the image referred to in McCain's profile. However, the new image was a lot less prosaic: it described a political about-face by McCain on the subject of gay marriage and a penchant for partnerships between passionate females.

'The only thing necessary to effectively commandeer McCain's page with my own messaging was to simply replace my own sample image on my server with a newly created sample on my server. No server but my own was touched and no laws were broken. The immaculate hack.'

McCain should consider himself lucky that the image wasn't redirected to Goatse Man.

The article is a little sensational, describing it as "the perfect cybercrime" despite admitting that no laws were broken -- except possibly by McCain, who I'm sure had no authorization to use Davidson's computer resources.

Speaking of hotlinking from MySpace, those of you running your own Apache webserver might find this little rewrite rule handy:


RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([a-z0-9]+\.)?myspace\.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://collect.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=signout [redirect,last]


WARNING: I don't run my own webserver, and consequently I haven't actually tested this. No warranty is given. Use at your own risk. If it blows up your computer and eats your dog, don't come crying to me.

Another study criticising voting machines

Over the last decade or so, the American political machine has become rotten to the core with vote fixing, secret counting, lost votes and other "irregularities". (Those with long memories of infamous political bosses like William Tweed will see this corruption as a return to normality after a half century of relative honesty and transparency.)

As Bruce Schneier reports, more and more US states are realising just how bad the electronic voting machines are. Like California before them, Ohio has just published a massive study on voting machines and found that they are insecure, untrustworthy, vulnerable to malicious software and operator fraud, and easy to undetectably hack using simple tools.

Colorado has decertified most of it's electronic voting machines. California seems to be ready to do the same, and surely Ohio can't be far behind. In 2006, New Mexico changed to a paper ballot system. Unfortunately for every politician who understands about the risks, there's another who is either ignorant, in denial, or actively pushing for insecure voting systems ("all the better to make sure the right person wins, my dear").

In related news, it seems that Diebold -- not the worst of the bad bunch at all, merely the first to be caught -- is re-thinking their voting machine business.

And in other news, former staff at Sequoia Voting Systems printing plant have gone public with claims that in 2000 they were ordered to send inferior quality punched cards to West Palm Beach (Florida), purposely misprinted, so that the cards would fail and Sequoia could push it's more profitable touch-screen voting machines to the states.

If Rudy Giuliani is Ras Al Ghul, is John Edwards Batman?

Ezra Klein suggests that Rudy Giuliani is really Ras Al Ghul:

Our society has reached its peak of decadence, imperialism, and corruption. By appealing to those worst excesses of the American psyche, Giuliani will get elected, and blow up the world, thus wiping our unsalvageable civilization from the map, and bringing the global order into balance. In other words, Rudy Giuliani is really Ra's Al Ghul. Discuss.

Over at Making Light, Teresa Hayden writes a long post about Giuliani. If you thought he was the hero of September 11, "America's Mayor", you couldn't be more wrong: Giuliani is the classic example of the incompetent, selfish, arrogant politician gaining political rewards for dealing -- badly -- with the problems that he himself caused in part.

Most people don't realise just how much of the disaster that was 9/11 was caused by Giuliani's decisions, starting with his decision -- against the advice of anti-terrorism experts -- to site the Emergency Command Centre in the World Trade Building, in a building that had already been attacked, so it would be convenient to City Hall. A nice short walk for Rudy.

There's more, much more. No wonder the New York firemen blame Giuliani personally for the deaths of so many of their fellows:

On 9/11 New York was left without an emergency command center because Giuliani, going against the advice of both the police and fire departments, decided to locate the center conveniently near City Hall in World Trade Center building 7, along with tanks containing tens of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel—in direct violation of New York City fire laws. This was despite the 1993 WTC bombing that proved it to be the number one terrorism target. It was this decision that put him on the street on 9/11 instead of inside a command center coordinating operations. Ironically, this also put him in front of hundreds of media cameras, sparking his image transformation into a “hero.”

While our “hero” was posing for the cameras, however, there was no communication possible between the police department and the fire department, whose REAL heroes were rushing to their deaths inside the towers. And there was likewise no communication between the police officers who identified an open stairway for escape from above the fire zone and the 911 phone operators who were telling soon-to-be-dead office workers to stay put and wait for the firefighters. Giuliani had been aware of the inadequacy of the emergency services’ communications equipment for many years, but did absolutely nothing about it. This criminal negligence also doomed hundreds of firefighters that were unable to hear orders to evacuate the north tower prior to collapse.

Whatever possibility existed for communication between the police and fire departments, whose radios operated on different frequencies, evaporated when Giuliani visited a makeshift fire/police command center that had formed in his absence. There he ORDERED THE POLICE BRASS TO LEAVE and accompany him uptown. This “heroic leadership” effectively put the fire department and police department commanders in different physical locations with no communication possible between them.

Present Police Commissioner Ray Kelly stated that he doesn’t have any idea who was in charge on 9/11 because Bernie Kerik and all the top chiefs in the police department basically acted as bodyguards to Giuliani and no one was running the shop.

[Source: The Myth of Giuliani and 9/11]

Those wacky Republicans

It certainly seems to be a pattern... Republican politician makes a career out of discriminating against gays, then gets caught in some sordid, dirty, anonymous tryst with another man.

Last time it was Bob Allen; before him it was Larry "Wide Stance" Craig; and now, Representative Richard Curtis -- what is it with men with a personal name as a surname? -- finds himself in a gay sex extortion scandal after allegedly promising a young man $1000 for unprotected sex, then claiming he only had $100.

Curtis denied he paid the man for sex, and said he had given him gas money.

Now, I don't really care what body parts people insert in other body parts, so long as everybody involved is a consenting adult, but this is newsworthy because Curtis has a history of voting against bills giving homosexuals equal protection under the law: in both 2005 and 2006, he voted against granting civil rights protections to homosexuals, and then in 2007 he voted against a bill creating domestic partnerships for same-sex couples.

Update: Tom's Modern World has a good cartoon covering my thoughts on this issue:

Secular Party of Australia

Thanks to PZ Myers:



Or see the Secular Party of Australia on YouTube.

Another missed anniversary

The weeks just fly past so quickly these days, and I keep missing significant anniversaries. Not so much personal ones, but historical ones.

One week ago was the anniversary of a terrible day of tragedy, when a group of unscrupulous, murderous thugs committed an atrocious crime against a democratic nation:

The September 11, 1973 military coup which overthrew the democratically elected government of Chile and replaced it with a right-wing junta lead by General Augusto Pinochet.

After the election of leftist Salvador Allende in 1970, the US government (then lead by Richard Nixon) waged undeclared economic war on Chile, hoping to bankrupt the nation. U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry said:

Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.

President Nixon ordered CIA director Richard Helms:

Make the economy scream [in Chile to] prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him.

For three years the US and Chilean right-wingers tried to destabilize Chile and cause Allende's government to fall, leading to severe economic problems (including runaway hyperinflation) but despite this his party's popularity was actually higher than ever.

So in 1973, encouraged by the CIA, the Chilean military attempted, but failed, a coup in June, followed by a second, but successful, coup on September 11.

Within days, the military junta had arrested 40,000 people. Many of them were tortured and killed. Pinochet's regime was likely responsible for the murder of close to three thousand political enemies, and the torture of tens of thousands of others. In the first three years of the coup alone, 130,000 people were arrested. Over the course of Pinochet's criminal regime, at least 27,000 people were imprisoned and tortured without trial.

By the standards of some murderous dictators, Pinochet was relatively small-time. Nevertheless, a crime is a crime, and 3,000 murders is enough of a crime for some countries to invade two countries.

Amusingly, while Pinochet was no friend to the poor and middle-class of Chile, neither was he the lapdog of the old right-wing industrial oligarchy that supported his grab for power. Pinochet removed the trade protections and subsidies that allowed the oligarchy to maintain their economic and political power. Pinochet ran the country for the benefit of the wealthy, but they were his wealthy friends and international investors, not the old guard.

There's no honor among thieves.

Which reminds me... apparently there was another historically significant crime committed on September 11. Details of that crime and its consequences have not fully come to light.

The Chaser security prank success

Have you ever wondered what sort of security AUD$250,000,000 buys? (Early reports suggested the cost of the security for APEC was $165 million; later figures suggested it actually cost $250 million. Either way, it is a lot of money.)

Apparently very little.

People are talking about The Chaser's wonderful prank where they drove a car with a fake Osama bin Laden right up to the highest security section of last week's APEC conference without being stopped. PZ Myers thought it was pure entertainment; Bruce Schneier is also a fan.

All the stupid security theatre and money wasted -- Australian taxpayers' money -- and it was only when Chas Licciardello, dressed as Osama bin Laden, stepped out of the car shouting "Where is my friend Bush? It has all been a misunderstanding!" that the security realised that something was wrong.

[Sarcasm alert] It's hard to blame the security guys. They're doing a simple job for lots of money: keep out people who don't belong. If they got fooled by The Chaser's cunning plan to put a Canadian flag on their cars, well, ask yourself: who wouldn't have been fooled? Just because "Osama bin Laden" was sitting in the back seat of a supposedly Canadian vehicle, well, that's hardly suspicious. And tell me that you too wouldn't have been fooled by this inauthentic-looking insecurity pass:

(Click image for full view.)

The Australian media, especially the Herald-Sun, loves to throw around the word "hero" to describe any Australian who basically isn't a total and complete waste of space. Saved thirty-seven children from a burning building? Hero. Rescued a cat stuck in a tree? Hero. Got hit by lightning and didn't die? Hero. Fell down drunk and chipped a tooth but didn't cry? Hero. But I think they really missed an opportunity to use the term appropriately. The Chaser guys might have been doing television comedy, but they were also making vitally important social commentary. As taxpayers and members of society, we are entitled -- no, not an entitlement, we have a duty -- to ask if our money is being put to good use. Spending a quarter of a million dollars, or even half that, for security which can be breached so easily is worse than a joke. The entire country should be thanking The Chaser for revealing that the Emperor has no clothes. Not only are they risking jail, but they actually risked their lives to make a point: all it needed was one trigger-happy government sniper on the rooftop and they could have been killed.

What we've learnt is that actual terrorists could have strolled right up to the restricted zone with no difficulty at all. Anybody could have done it. While the police were busy shutting down the entire city of Sydney (at who knows what economic cost) and keeping democratic protesters at least ten kilometres away from the conference, Osama bin Laden himself could have strolled right up to George Bush and given him a wedgie.

Or detonated a bomb.

If the clowns running this nation had really cared about security, instead of just the security opera of 24/7 helicopter fly-bys, snipers on rooftops and stopping tourists from taking photos, they would have held the conference somewhere inaccessible, like Canada did in 2002 when they held the G8 Conference in Kananaskis, population 429.

[Aside: I like these people.]

There's a certain level of tension between the needs of democracy -- the right of people to protest where they will be heard by those making the decisions -- and of security. Personally I think that the needs of democracy should outweigh those of security. Presidents and prime ministers might come and go, but democracy needs to survive. Protesters should be allowed to protest right outside George Bush's bedroom window, at least from 9am to 5pm. But if you want to put security first, then don't hold your conference in Sydney. Hold it miles away from any population centre, where you have more control over who comes in. That's good security and good economics.

Instead, what we got was bad security and bad economics, but lots of security opera. Good security should be as close to invisible as you can afford -- just visible enough so you know it's there, but not so much that it disrupts normal activity. Instead Sydney was completely disrupted, money was wasted, and for no good effect.

Naturally, the con artists who have wasted our money aren't happy about being exposed. NSW police minister David Campbell threw a hissy-fit at the tricksters:

An angry David Campbell denied he was embarrassed by the comedians' ability to penetrate APEC's restricted zone - rather, he was pleased the "multi-layered" security had worked.

He said the prank was inappropriate and he "did not see the funny side at all".

The Chaser's production team had been specifically warned by police to behave responsibly during the APEC security lockdown, he said.

"[Police] said 'we understand that parody and satire are entertaining and fun, many people watch the program and enjoy it, but please understand the seriousness of this matter and please take caution as you go about making your program.

"That seems to have been thrown out the window and that, I think, is inappropriate."

What's inappropriate is that Campbell hasn't been laughed out of town. Humourless, pretentious gits like him have no clue and should have no place in positions of power. Alas, the way of the world is that those who shouldn't have power so often do. The skills needed to become powerful so rarely include the skills needed to govern wisely.

The reality is that tricksters like The Chaser don't just make us laugh. Satire and parody are not just fun entertainments; they have a vital role in society. It has been said that medieval Fools, alone in the court, were permitted to make fun of the king and thus keep him from becoming too egotistical. (I doubt this was true in general, but it makes a nice story.) By puncturing the undeserved egos of the incompetent, tricksters help reduce the harm they can do. Far from being irresponsible, puncturing the illusion of security theatre is a fine example of civic responsibility.

Campbell had two possible responses to The Chaser's actions: he could admit to being embarrassed by the security failure and promise to do better, or he could bluster and blame the messengers. He choose to bluster and blame the messengers, and for that he should be out of government so fast it leaves his head spinning.

Unfortunately, for all of Australia's reputation as a nation of larrikins with a healthy disrespect for authority, we're becoming a nation of sheep who only do as we're told. (But that's a topic for another day.) Australians seem to have taken The Chaser team to heart, but not enough for them to demand real changes to the political system which allows the government to engage in this expensive security opera with no genuine benefit. While I would like to think that next time NSW voters go to the polls they will remember this and vote accordingly, the cynic in me expects that by this time next week it will all be forgotten.

This prank has punctured another myth. By showing just how easy it is for anyone to get through the loudest security money can buy, it puts a whole different perspective on terrorism. It doesn't take a devious master criminal to get through security. So where are all the terrorist attacks? If Chas Licciardello can get so close to the President of the USA, why hasn't a real terrorist managed it?

It isn't because the terrorists are afraid of our security, or because they're less competent than The Chaser. It's because they're few and far between. Despite the constant cries that the sky is falling, terrorists are thin on the ground. Unless you live in one of a few high-risk places, terrorism is a rare risk. The dangers of over-reaction are far greater than the danger we're trying to protect from.

The Chaser's press release can be read here; over here we have a long thread of comments where one angry right-winger (claims to be an ex-soldier; reads more like a scared little boy) gets angry at The Chaser for exposing the Emperor's New Clothes and says they should have been shot to punish them for discovering just how lousy the security really was. Oh my.

Thanks to Hasimir, who first brought The Chaser's cunning stunt to my attention (via Mrs Impala).