John Quiggin tells us a bit about how "Australia now has its own version of the Downing Street memos, dating back to 28 February 2002. That’s when Trevor Flugge, Chairman of our (massively corrupt) grain trading monopoly AWB was told of the invasion of Iraq, and of Australia’s planned participation by our Ambassador to the UN*, John Dauth who even predicted that readmitting weapons inspectors would only produce a short delay." This grain trading monopoly, incidentally, seems like a very poor idea based on Quiggin's description.
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Memos from the Antipodes
24 Nov 2006 07:11 am
Comments (9)
Matt, care to explain the asterisk after UN?
Er, nevermind, I see that was in Quiggin's original post.
"This grain trading monopoly, incidentally, seems like a very poor idea based on Quiggin's description."
Um, no. An incredibly corrupt, criminal wheat board conspiring to subvert international law is obviously a bad idea. But Canada's had an excellent Wheat Board monopoly for 70 years now, owned and operated by both the government and the farmers as a cooperative.
Of course, with our newest government, American agribusiness is finally getting it's dearest wish and is seeing the Wheat Board dismantled. This will guarantee lower selling prices for the farmers, and (at best) no lowered cost for consumers, but hey, obviously Australia's crappy regime means the entire idea is bad.
Australia's corrupt and subversive wheat board no more delegitimizes producer-owned commodity monopolies than America's corrupt and subversive President delegitimizes the idea of elections.
Nothing new under the sun, eh? IF Stone documented spikes in commodity futures in his Hidden History of the Korean War that suggested the war was a done deal months before it appeared to begin. (The 'hidden' part, of course, refers to the fact that he documented his history with published news that anyone could read and interpret.)
In a society ruled by law, insider trading based on knowledge that a war was planned in secret would be a one-way ticket to jail.
Has "serial catowner" inverted the priorities? While I can understand a need to fight war sometimes, and to sometimes make plans in secret, I can't help feeling that the emphasis should be on giving out one way tickets to jail for people who plan unnecessary wars in secret. Or at least put the emphasis on not actually implementing plans for wars that turn out to be not necessary. The reflection of those plans in commodity futures prices is a potentially useful signal that something's happenning!
In a society ruled by law, insider trading based on knowledge that a war was planned in secret would be a one-way ticket to jail.
While there actually are esteemed legal philosophers who support the similar proposition that you can't tell whether or not a legal system exists in a given territory until you've evaluated the purported legal system morally, I'm interested in this particularly strong statement of the view. If a society hasn't criminalized a particular type of insider trading then it's not operating under the rule of law? Really?
I know, it seems unbearably cynical to imagine that arms merchants, government contractors, oil companies, and futures traders with inside knowledge of what the future will bring, would combine to take a nation to war.
And at the same time hopelessly idealistic to think that prosecuting inside traders for such behavior might influence their behavior, or the likelihood of the nation being hoodwinked into such a war.
Well, as I said, one question here would be if there was any evidence that such things actually occurred. In this case, of course, we already know that such things occurred- arms merchants are doing a land office business, contractors have taken us to the store, if there's ever any oil to sell, everyone but the Iraqis is first in line for the proceeds. But hey, miracles happen, and maybe the Australian wheat merchants didn't take advantage of what might only have been a very good guess.
And I'm sure philosophers will agonize interminably about whether it's really a crime to start a war so speculators can make a killing. As a lay person, I do the short form- it is.
Are there really people so innocent that they don't understand this is how the rich make money in war, and a major reason the rich are so willing for "us" to go to war?
the australian wheat board worked fine until it was privatised. none of this would've happened if not for that idiotic decision.
Comments closed December 08, 2006.
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Heads in the Sand
For anyone curious, I've stuck the relevant text of the memo and links to the original here.
Posted by Jon | November 24, 2006 8:51 AM