Hollowed Out - Part 2

The Meaningful And Meaningless Deaths

Count me as one of the people having an existential crises of sorts in the wake of the executions in Indonesia. Here were lives that were building meaning after committing crimes and being sentenced to death by shooting squad. I can remember when they are originally arrested in 2006 and seeing them on the news report thinking, "well, there you go a bunch of idiots and they'll face the death squad". Nine years on I have to admit I was the one that had not entertained the emotional ramification of the sentence.

To be honest, Chan looked like a shifty little con man, while Sukumaran hardly registered as and entity. The rest of the Bali 9 looked like kids from the outer 'burbs, short on education, civics, and common sense, and long on daring. It was easy to look down on these people - especially if you were from anywhere middle-class. These kids looked like the off-spring of the hopeless welfare class, trying to win a break through crime. They were - and I'm ashamed to say it - easy to dismiss.

In the decade since, we saw Chan and Sukumaran became the focus of just why we believe capital punishment is wrong. They grew into men we could respect and in the process made us confront the reason why Australia did away with capital punishment, anew. These were not meaningless lives; they were as meaningful as any life you might witness in this world, if not more so than your average joe or joan. Being a nihilist of sorts, I'm pretty sensitive to things that are meaningful in a simple secular (i.e as in a non-metaphysical) way. Meaningful in a way that you could ask yourself "Would Jean-Paul Sartre think that was meaningful?" - and if the answer was yes, you'd be delighted. It doesn't come by a lot on a personal level and universal ones are even harder to find.

I've no doubt Jean-Paul Sartre would have found the pair of reformed drug smugglers, more than meaningful. Had Joko Widodo granted clemency, he too would have burnished his reputation and found himself in the constellation of meaning forming around these two men. Instead he chose to have them killed and all that remains is this utter sense that yes, capital punishment is still wrong and that there is something very wrong with the state institutions of Indonesia.

Which brings me to the other, equally disturbing experience as that of the meaningfulness of Chan and Sukumaran's lives being cut short. I'm reminded of Katrina Dawson who perished in the Lindt Cafe siege last December. She did just about everything ins life and was doing good work for society. You couldn't have asked for a more meaningful life than hers, and then one day a crazed idiot takes her hostage and they wind up dead. I haven't really processed that either, but it was enough to put me in a despairing funk for weeks. The nihilist inside of me was screaming "it's all fucking meaningless!!"
It took weeks to shut it up; and maybe it shut up because it eventually lost breath and lost the appetite to humiliate.

And it just might still be meaningless as a fart in the wind. Most people would insert a bit of metaphysics to get by, but I'm just not wired that way. I'm seriously struggling to see the point of existential meaning that could emerge from actions - as advocated by JP Sartre - that would transcend this morass of idiocy. Chan and Sukumaran came close, I'll give them that. Yet coming an inch within and missing by a mile offer no qualitative difference. And if we are seeking the qualia of experience, it is overwhelmingly tinged with the futility of human existence.

I'm telling you, it's seriously debilitating.  But then, you read news like this. There are all thee states out there that keep justifying they need to kill people. It's really too bizarre for words.

One Nation In Trauma, One Nation In Denial

Everybody's Feeling it

Perhaps nothing brings us together like tragedy. On the day of execution for Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, our nation is gripped by this strange hopeless grief for these people they hardly know but count as their country men. We are distraught that nothing will sway Joko Widodo, or the Indonesian justice system from the course of executing people. The Sydney Morning Herald's page  of headlines alone is like a live coverage of the execution that will come tonight. People are grieving.

Peter Hatcher wrote something rather harsh today. It was an angry article.
John Birmingham tried to put it into perspective.
Mark Kenny thinks Indonesia's credibility is somehow at stake.

It looks like President Joko Widodo is boxed in to a position where he cannot exercise clemency. His party wants the execution, his party leaders have practically ordered him to execute him; political reality in Indonesia seems to prohibit his clemency and he himself has a reason to push ahead. The protestations of other nations apart from Australia - from France, Switzerland, Philippines and Brazil have carried no weight with a government that is intent on proceeding with the executions.

Try as we might, it is hard not to see the shadow of somebody's malice. The executions will hurt us all, and this dark malice is taking joy in it.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian government has appointed two Indonesian spiritual counsellors to be with Sukumaran and Andrew Chan in their final hours. 

In what Chan's brother Michael described as "the last bit of dignity denied," the Attorney-General's office denied the men their choice of religious guide. 

This is despite reassuring the Australian embassy two days earlier that they would be permitted to choose who would witness their deaths.

Talk about cheap shots. The Indonesian government seems to know no act too low to be included in its procession of low acts. It's sort of pathetic we treat this neighbouring nation with the respect we afford them. Everything about their institutions reek of being a sham. All I can say is that I hope to never visit Indonesia - I've lost hope in the country; I would never feel safe or welcome or respected. Such contempt shown by Indonesia can only be returned with contempt. Really, Joke Widodo can go get fucked by an Orangutan, and it would be too good a thing to happen to him.

View From The Couch - 19/Feb/2015

The Recession We're Going To Get

Back in the Hawke-Keating years, the RBA jacked up the interest rates to 17% temporarily, to cool down the financial markets that were going pretty apeshit. I promptly put some money into term deposit and it was the happiest 3month return I had for term deposits. The mergers and acquisitions craze of the late 1980s was something to behold. People like Alan Bond were borrowing gobs of money to buy out Kerry Packer from his TV network. Think about that. 10% rate and Bond is still willing to borrow the money to buy out Kerry Packer from something he spent his lifetime building. He bought the thing for 4 times what it was worth.

Packer of course later said that "you only get one Alan Bond in your life", and eventually bought the Nine Network back for the sum it was actually worth based on real earnings. And you look at the ZIRP world we know live in, and I can't help but wonder what an Alan Bond might have done with it. Except of course we're living in an era of record private debt. If there is an old 80s style M&A corporate raider out there, he or she is already too in debt to borrow more. The animal spirits are constrained by the considerable debt burdens that are out there.

I bring all this up because as the RBA edges ever lower with its interest rates, it is clear the Australian economy isn't traveling all that great. All these people have jumped in to the share market but the earnings just aren't there. Weirder still, we have a government that doesn't recognise just how badly things are going and is backing away from reforms. So much so that some economist is recommending a recession to focus their minds.

All of this is extraordinary because for the better part of the last 20years we've been told high interest rates are bad and low interest rates are good. Admittedly, it was a line peddled by the Howard government so it deserves a truck-load of salt, but truly, the fabricated political narrative has been that  low interest rates are sign of good, stable governance when in fact it has been the mechanism through which we've built up a property bubble and record private debt. Basically, the RBA cutting rates correlates with bad management of the economy, low consumer confidence and low business confidence.

In other words, in the olden days governments would spend money and it would stimulate economic activity, and when this got too heated, the RBA would raise interest rates to slow things down. Now, we have a government that won't borrow money, won't invest and is cooling down the economy in the hopes of an austerity-led way back to budget surplus and so the RBA has to do the stimulatory work by cutting interest rates to historic lows.

So another way to look at the interest rates being at 2.25%, is that it's clear the RBA is telling us we're not exactly in the best way at all. Now that the mining boom is over there isn't exactly a sector that can push Australia's economic growth. Of course under the Gillard-Swan budgets, the plan was for housing construction to take over, but even that has its problems. If property prices are already out of line with historic norms and over-invested, it's unlikely that there's hidden room for growth in that sector. Builders and property developers are potentially building things that could turn into the Australian equivalent of China's ghost cities, or they could take a huge loss.

The Real Reason They Print Money

It's kind of strange how for the better part of the late 20th century, inflation was what had to be tamed. This was done by raising interest rates. Today, the great fear is deflation, and to this end interest rates have plummeted around the world. Not content with that, the US Federal Reserve printed money in the hopes that the printed money would be inflationary, and counter the fall inapt prices. The money that got printed didn't trickle down to the street as per the classic claim about 'trickle-down' effects. They went overseas in search of yield, and ended up causing asset bubbles in far-flung places like Turkey.

Now that they've stopped printing money, the money has repatriated back to the USA, bringing about an asset collapse - a sudden deflation, if you will - in these emerging markets. As the US dollar rises, the money still doesn't exactly find its way to the street level. There's no real growth, there's no real investment into businesses, there's no movement that printed money was supposed to buy.

So why do they print all this money? It's so banks don't take a loss. It's so the rich don't take a loss. It's so people with mortgages don't take a loss. Which is understandable but when it is on the scale that it is, you have to wonder how this is going to distort the economy. But people who bought assets on borrowed money? They just can't be allowed to take a loss.

That's it. All this time we'd been led to believe it was for the good of everybody but no matter how you dice it, it works out okay for the people on the street because they don't lose their jobs; but it works out better for the rich because basically they get to have their cake and eat it too. I think this is called a moral hazard, but really, it's too late now.

What Have We Done For You Lately?

I'll keep this brief, but Tony Abbott sure cuts to the jugular. He's reminded the Indonesians it's not just any neighbour, but a friend who forked over a lot of money in aid after the 2004 Tsunami. At first glance, it seems incredibly crass. But none of the other avenues of reasoning, cajoling, pleading, flattering, arguing for mercy, arguing the merits of mercy, and even talking behind closed doors for a long time, seem to have weakened the resolve of the Indonesian government or legal establishment. So I will have to admit that outright crassness might not be such a bad idea. After all, the message does not seem to be getting through. The Indonesian establishment perhaps need to be reminded that it's not any old neighbour or any old country asking; it's the country down south with a hefty load of diplomatic clout knocking on their door.

That being said, one imagines this makes things really hard for the Indonesian government to simultaneously save face and back down. Yet, that horrible problem was already exacerbated by the fact that so many claims were made that the reason the two Australians are getting executed is for justice. It's hard to back down from high ideals. In that sense perhaps Tony Abbott spelling out just what Australia means to Indonesia and how bloody-minded Australia can be about such things, just might help to focus the minds of the Indonesian establishment.

The question that should be running through their minds is "why is Australia and its people so dead set on stopping this execution which is so clearly just?" Yes, why would a nation go so far out on a limb for a pair of drug trafficking criminals? Is it their convict roots? Is it just another example of western arrogance and hypocrisy?

It's turning in to an interesting ideological joust between the human rights discourse and the zero-tolerance for drugs discourse. This could have interesting repercussions in years to come, even over in Australia. It might be the next piece to break down in our own anti-drugs position.

Quick Shot - 16/Feb/2015

Celebrating Freedom Of Expression

No, I'm not going to write about the poor person shot dead in Denmark. Instead I'm just going to point at the abject idiocy of finding in an audit that Sarah Ferguson was not respectful enough in her questioning the treasurer. It strains credulity but somehow, we have these things:

While acknowledging the Ferguson-Hockey interview was "compelling television", Ms Ryan finds: "I felt that the 'tone' of the questioning in this particular interview could have been interpreted by some viewers to be a potential breach of the ABC's impartiality guidelines." 

Ms Ryan singles out three points of the interview for criticism, starting with Ms Ferguson's first question to Mr Hockey. 

"Now, you've just delivered that budget," Ms Ferguson said. "It's a budget with a new tax, with levies, with co-payments. Is it liberating for a politician to decide election promises don't matter?

Ms Ryan found the question was factually correct but said its tone made the Treasurer seem "under attack".
"In my view, the language in Ferguson's first question was emotive," she found. "I also believe that the average viewer would consider that the Treasurer was not treated with sufficient respect by the interviewer." 

Ms Ferguson later told Mr Hockey that she had asked a "yes or no question". She then said: "I don't need to teach you, Treasurer, what a tax is. You know that a co-payment, a levy and a tax are all taxes by any other name."

I mean, really? Naturally the finding has been rejected by the ABC. Well, of course it would it's so clearly stupid. Ms. Ryan felt the tone could be interpreted by some viewers to be a potential breach of the ABC's impartiality guidelines? I mean really? She feels (not thinks, perhaps vaguely or even strongly, show won't say which) that maybe some minority in the audience-land watching might be doing some interpreting in such a way that it's not impartial? And that makes it a breach? Just how stupid is this auditor? 

If I said I was impartial and made a statement 'X' (fill it in any way you like, It's hypothetical), of course I can expect somebody out there in the readership to maybe interpret that statement to be not as impartial as I say it is; but the onus is on that person to argue that case. Sarah Ferguson is right to ask the Treasurer whether election promises don't matter, after he delivers a budget that completely flies in the face of the election promises. It's a legitimate question that at least 50% of the population would like to know. 

It's not the ABC's or Sarah Ferguson's or Emma Alberici's fault or problem that the government finds itself trying to squeeze a budget through which contravenes their own election promises. If the folks in government can't handle the questions that come from such  budget, let alone consequences of their actions, maybe they're in the wrong profession. It is most certainly not the job of the press to let this kind of thing go by to the keeper. We all know this; we all know how this works; anybody watching the interview would be watching on the basis that they understand this as a fundamental tenet of the position the press holds in our democracy. So Colleen Ryan has invented a straw man, not to beat down, but to wave around and say, "this straw man right here might have missed the context! The ABC is biased". 

I mean, "hullo". 

Drawing the kind of conclusion that this Colleen Ryan has drawn is so stupid it blows my mind that she was one the editor of a newspaper. But of course she was the editor of a Murdoch rag. Surprise! Ms Ryan, try this advice for size: one might feel that the act of the ABC audit itself could be interpreted by some observers to be an abject failure at reasoning. But of course there is a lot of stupidity going around at the moment. 

The government wants to muzzle the ABC because it asks blunt questions. Yet it says Freedom of Expression is an important thing in a democracy when a terrorist shoots a cartoonist or film maker. If they hold both positions, there's a lottos cognitive dissonance going on in this government and it's not helping the electorate at all. 

The Death Penalty Thing Over In Indonesia

As the execution looms for Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumuran, you get the feeling that Australia is inexorably being dragged into a weird orbit of Indonesian legalism. Indonesia for its part is arguing the death penalty as good deterrence and that the law is the law and if the punishment is not meted out, it discredits the whole legal system. Australia is trotting out all the emotional arguments about the death penalty and amazingly seems to have forgotten the reasoning behind its own end to capital punishment in Australia. 

Personally, I am against the death penalty so it goes without saying that I do not wish to see the two men executed. But it does embarrass me greatly when I watch the arguments put forward as reasons why mercy should be shown to these two men. Surely there is a deeper point of jurisprudence that is universal and appropriate to appeal to the Indonesian government. It strikes me as very odd that we only seem to have our own personal moral objections as something that should apply to Indonesia. It's a really bad argument, and is hardly likely to succeed. 

There's got to be a better argument to be mounted. 

Also, it seems rather ironic that the former lawyer  who fronted for big tobacco and James Hardie in the asbestos trials is now the foreign minister trying to stop the execution.