I attended a lunch at Brookings on Friday on the topic of Catholics and US politics. Dr William Galston argued that American Catholics are numerous, strategically located in swing states such as Florida, Iowa, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, and swing voters. ‘As the Catholic vote goes’, he concluded, ‘so goes the election.’ Read more »
Guest blogger: Shiro Armstrong is a Research Scholar at the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research, Australian National University.
This week Hu Jintao is visiting Japan, the first such trip by a Chinese president in 10 years. It could produce a breakthrough in the important yet rocky relationship between the two neighbouring East Asian powers. Read more »
Could the 'Bataan death march' that is the Democratic presidential nomination process finally be over? Read more »
In reponse to our discussion about Americans, Judah Grundstein has some personal reflections: Read more »
Guest blogger: Sanjay Ramesh, who teaches at the University of Technology, Sydney, is Senior Political Editor at the Sydney Fiji Times and Adjunct Fellow at the University of Fiji. Read more »
Chris responds to my post of yesterday: Read more »
CIA Director Michael Hayden recently gave a powerhouse speech about global trends, in which he says that one of the surest paths to an intelligence breakdown is a failure of imagination. It is indeed common for political experts of all kinds to assume that the future will look more or less like the present, with a few incremental changes of a similar kind to those already seen. Seldom do we anticipate (much less prepare for) radical change. Read more »
One of the many consequences of the US sub-prime crisis and the associated collateral damage is likely to be a re-evaluation of the role of monetary policy – something I touched on last year. James Galbraith takes a longer view in this speech on the ‘collapse of monetarism and the irrelevance of the new monetary consensus’ (hat tip to the excellent Read more »
Mike Steketee might be a bit annoyed at his sub-editor today. Steketee has written a perfectly reasonable column about why the last government's anti-terror laws went too far, but the piece is headlined 'Real terror is found in legislation', which suggests a rather more radical perspective (about how our government is the real terrorist) than the piece offers. Steketee doesn't argue that there is no terrorist threat. Read more »
A frivolous highlight from Ryan Lizza's insight into Bill Clinton’s role in his wife’s presidential campaign from the New Yorker:
On the stump, the former President dispensed idiosyncratic political analysis. “One of the reasons that she won Ohio that nobody wrote about,” he said, without explanation, “is that Ohio has a plant that produces the largest number of solar reflectors in America.”
The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) had this reminder that just over a year ago, the Court issued arrest warrants against two Sudanese: the former Minister of State for the Interior and a Janjaweed leader. They were charged with 51 counts of alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes. Read more »
The best explanation I have read of why Hillary Clinton refuses to recognise the inevitable and just drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination (and I can't recall where I read it) is that she is convinced Obama is a weak candidate. She thinks (or hopes) this will become plain to Democrats as the primary process continues, and she wants to have her political organisation in place when he falls. Dropping out now would just open things up for Al Gore if Obama implodes. Read more »
Tomorrow is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand. It's a public holiday, so normal blogging will resume on Monday.
Australian and PNG Ministers met yesterday in Madang in the first bilateral ministerial meeting since 2005. The 60-member Australian delegation, including six ministers and 3 parliamentary secretaries, sent a strong signal that the relationship with PNG had not only improved but was now 'first class' in the words of Foreign Minister Stephen Smith. Read more »
We’ll know later today whether Hillary Clinton has done well enough in the Pennsylvania primary to stay in the Democratic presidential nomination contest with Barack Obama. I wonder if voters will punish her for comments like this?: Read more »
Sam's suggestion that counter-terrorism money from the ‘hard power’ Defence budget be reallocated to the ‘soft power’ DFAT budget because they reaped too much reward from the Howard Government’s focus on military solutions to the terrorist threat is a bit on the simplistic side. Read more »
It was extremely pleasing to see a title like Closer Economic and Political Integration with the Pacific appear in the Australia 2020 Summit report. This represents a sharp and most welcome break with an Australian tendency to cast the Pacific Islands as weak and failing states that pose challenges to Australian security. Read more »
A reader writes: Read more »
With parliament not having met in over a year, government business paralysed since the withdrawal of Shi’a members of cabinet in November 2006 and with 17 unsuccessful attempts to elect a president since Emile Lahoud stepped down in November last year, one could be forgiven for thinking the soap opera that is Lebanese politics could not get any more farcical. Read more »
Yes, he did actually say that to the Pope. Have a good weekend.
Edwin Lowe writes (my response follows): Read more »
From Peter McCawley: Read more »
Some disappointing news from Uganda. Nine senior members of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) were murdered, apparently at the behest of its crazy leader, Joseph Kony, with signs the group's peace negotiators lack direct communications with their leader, and that factions are emerging. Read more »
Hans van Leeuwen writes in with this comment on our Korea thread started here and here. Read more »
BHP's proposed acquisition of Rio Tinto is, no doubt, ready to bounce back to life any day now. So far, BHP has failed to make a bid that Rio Tinto believes represents fair value. But I wonder whether the Australian government and other regulators will allow the merger to take place. BHP obviously thinks it's in with a good chance. While I'm not an economist, combining the world's biggest mining company with the world's third largest doesn't seem to be issue free. Read more »
The Economist this week looks at some early signs of a thawing in cross-strait relations, with the recent election of the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou. But what are the chances this will translate into a decrease in the dollar diplomacy that has been so destabilising in the Pacific? Read more »
Media reaction to news that the Government is considering laws to monitor email traffic has focused on privacy. That's entirely legitimate, but there should also be concern about how useful it is for any Government to have these powers. Read more »
Gareth Evans' puppy joke is diplomatic legend. In 1992, the then-Australian Foreign Minister, when told during a visit to Hong Kong that Governor Chris Patten's family dog had gone missing, responded that it might have found it's way to Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's dinner table. The ABC sketch comedy program, The Late Show, had some fun with this incident. Note that the clip starts with a Jeff Kennett impersonation and later FW De Klerk, but the Gareth bit is in there, in two parts: Read more »
Watching the war of words over the Olympic torch relay and the Chinese government’s policy in Tibet, I am getting a foreboding sense of déjà vu about the bad old days of the early 1990s Asian values debate. The 'sacred flame', when not being hidden, is passing demonstrators who criticize the Chinese Government for its human rights record and groups of overseas Chinese demonstrating against the first group as demeaning Chinese society and civilization. Read more »
The images you see scattered throughout this post are collected from the free photo-sharing site, Flickr, and are one manifestation of the 'citizen journalism' (with global reach and at negligible cost) that the internet facilitates. I'll return to their larger political significance in a moment. Read more »
On Tuesday I wrote a short post about the recently signed NZ-China free trade agreement, pointing out that the NZ Herald had declared China to be New Zealand's 'new best friend'. This, I thought, would come as a bit of a shock to Australian readers. Paul Cotton responds:
After 86 years we are still waiting to get our apples into Australia. The Chinese will buy them by the container load. Our new friends don't use non-tariff barriers. Read more »
The New Republic's blog, The Plank, reports that the Obama campaign has been caught out, with organisers for an event featuring Mrs Obama arranging the crowd behind her so that it would look more racially diverse on TV. 'Get me more white people, we need more white people' is the killer quote from one of the organisers. This is indeed rather crude, but such manipulations have been common in American political campaigns for decades. Read more »
Alison Broinowski writes: Read more »
Guest blogger: Raoul Heinrichs, the 2007 Lowy Institute Thawley Scholar, is on a research placement at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. Read more »
Guest blogger: Sanjay Ramesh, who teaches at the University of Technology, Sydney, is Senior Political Editor at the Sydney Fiji Times and Adjunct Fellow at the University of Fiji. Read more »
Here's an arresting headline for Australian readers, from today's New Zealand Herald:
This may be a case of slight over-exuberance in reaction to the news that Beijing and Wellington have inked a free trade deal. But if we spot Helen Clark saluting Wen Jiabao, then its time to panic.
One way of getting a quick insight into a community's perception of itself is to check out its licence plates — or more precisely, the little slogan the authorities have selected to write across the top of the plates. My home state of New South Wales reveals a bit of its pride with 'The First State'. Victoria struggles along with 'The Place To Be'. New York is 'The Empire State', while efficient but boring Maryland contents itself with 'www.maryland.gov'. Read more »
The Australian financial sector is generally in good shape, but the strains overseas will lead to a rethink of the 'international best practice' rules for regulating and supervising the financial sector, and this will put pressure on us to adopt whatever international changes occur. The debate is underway with US Treasury Secretary Paulson’s report, and we in Australia should join in, as it is in our interests to ensure a robust international financial sector. Read more »
Late Show host David Letterman has been using his opening monologue to make John McCain 'old man' jokes for weeks now. This week, McCain got his own back. Enjoy your weekend.
Two readers have written in with comments on my recent post on Rudd’s announcement that he will now be staying with Ambassadors when he travels abroad.
Jerry Argyriou writes: Read more »
I have an op-ed in today’s Herald on ‘the month of the two PMs’ – the visits to Washington by John Howard and Kevin Rudd. Rocco has also done a nice illustration to go with the piece. Read more »
Peter McCawley writes: Read more »
Guest blogger: Raoul Heinrichs (pictured), is the 2007 Lowy Institute Thawley Scholar. Read more »
In his speech to the Brookings Institution on 31 March, Prime Minister Rudd suggested China should be encouraged to work with other donors to develop appropriate OECD-consistent norms for development assistance delivery. He added that, as getting assistance to Pacific Island nations on a stable footing was crucial for Australia, he would be happy to partner with China in some pilot projects. Read more »
Brendan Howe comments on Prime Minister Rudd's support for turning the Six-Party Talks into a permanent security mechanism: Read more »
The recent news that our spartan PM will shun the luxuries of five-star hotels and stay instead at Ambassadors’ residences while travelling abroad is an interesting one for the bean counters to analyse. What appears like a selfless sacrifice by the PM to save taxpayers the cost of a hotel room is more likely going to cost us a whole lot more. Read more »
I recently interviewed the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Dr Luis Moreno-Ocampo (pictured left). In the post below he points out the significance of having Japan on board as a new member and says eventual US membership is inevitable. He talks about Australian cooperation with the Court since his visit here last year and kicks off with a comment on the importance of the Court's latest arrest. Read more »
