cam, 688 words, 0 comments, Barack Obama, International Liberalism, Berlin Speech, American Idealism, Woodrow Wilson

It took me a while to find it, but I eventually found the non-obvious link to Obama's speech in Berlin. Sometimes a speech is a speech and it should be linked as a 'speech'. The main reason for interest in this is that it outlines Obama's most likely approach to foreign policy.

The first part of the speech discusses the common causes of humanity, seeking freedom over tyranny through the action of both the few and the many. He uses the analogy of Berlin, isolated by communism, as an outpost of liberalism sustained by both local action, and national action - such as the airlift and NATO - to ensure that freedom was maintained.

The second part of the speech contains global issues that are bigger than any one nation to tackle. He uses the analogy of Berlin and humanity's common cause in freedom to thread to shared concerns by individuals, communities and nations at a global level. However he celebrates diversity in that cause:

Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more - not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.

Obama's approach to foreign policy is international liberalism. It is predicated on the freedom of human action, global markets, and the open communication between individuals, communities and nations. The policies are predicated on the common causes of humanity and shared interests rather than real politick of 19thC European power politics or the Cold War detente.

International Liberalism and its strands, such as Wilsonianism carries an element of idealism in it, but so does American politics courtesy of its innovative constitution and the imprint that leaves on the American people and politicians. Obama's conclusion in his speech is consistent with American aspirationalism:

But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived - at great cost and great sacrifice - to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world.

Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom - indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares.

What has always united us - what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores - is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

Neoconservatism was always too small and myopic for America. Its insular nationalism and fear of international institutions left it isolated. A paradox as America is quite an international and global culture - and despite President Bush's constant rhetoric about freedom in his intervention into Iraq it always stunk of real politick and the Carter doctrine.

Obama's foriegn policy speech is big enough for the American dream of a better world, but implementation counts too. Woodrow Wilson was unable to establish his view of international liberalism either at home or abroad. In the same way the Doc Evatt's efforts at international liberalism fell afoul of the bipolar detente policies of the Cold War.

I have no doubt Barack Obama will be the next US President. The US Republican Party is literally broken as a brand and repugnant democratically through the bad governance of the Bush, Hastert and Delay years. I prefer the policies of international liberalism to the intrusive and nationalistic nature of neo-conservatism. I wish Obama luck in achieving the ideals expressed in his Berlin speech. (reply)

cam, 285 words, 0 comments, Australian Politics, Liberal Party, State Government

Australia has the issue of Labor Governments at the state level having been in power too long and atrophying policy wise. Democratically Australians have a habit of voting in managerialist executives. The idealists are few and far between and for the most part we reward buying votes than good governance until the stink becomes too obvious that it cannot be ignored. This was true of Howard and it was true of Hawke/Keating before him.

The state Labor Governments have been fortunate in having uncompetitive Liberal opponents to run against, or in the case of Queensland a divided conservative opposition. There is no way that the Iemma Government would have survived the last election if the Liberals had even a reasonable leader and senior group of politicians. With the demise of the Howard Government at the national level it has meant that Australian governance is dominated by old, atrophying and on the nose Labor governments.

The Rudd government is new to executive power and will probably be weak until they win a second election so governance at the national and federal levels will be timid until either a Liberal government comes in with starry eyed policies or the Rudd government asserts the ongoing expansion of national power over weak and unpopular state governments.

Gary Sauer-Thompson argues that poor planning because of the pursuit of neo-liberal policies. The Liberal Party has a deal to answer for here too. They should be in power in NSW for certain if they were anyway halfway decent as a democratic option. I am old enough to remember Nick Greiner and to think his governance was good. The Liberals are making it way too hard for themselves at the state level. (reply)

cam, 345 words, 0 comments, Suburbia, Green, Urban, Suburbs, Suburban Production

I am not sure why suburbia cops so much in the way of hostility. I grew up in Sydney's north western suburbs, and other than a stint in Coogee/Maroubra, the rest of my time in Australia and the United States has been in suburban environments. Even now I am living in suburbia. I like it.

Normally the stereotypes of suburbia are thrown up, such as the row upon row of aesthetically similar houses, townhomes and condos. Like in the picture above which is a new suburb in Nth Virginia. What isn't seen in that picture is that those townhomes back onto a town-squarish type of mall.

The other arguments against suburbia are that it is boring, looks too similar, lacks culture, people are fleeing back to the urban environments because of gas prices, houses use too much gas/electricity, roads and petrol consumption, etc. While urban environments achieve green economies of scale the impact from suburbs is not that great. Most of our fossil fuel emissions are from stationary energy sources, not road transportation. Same with water consumption, agriculture is the biggest user of fresh water, not residential (urban or surburban).

There has been an exit from suburbia recently - as in the last two decades - as young people seek more cultural lives in the town squares of cities and the increasing cost of suburban housing followed by the foreclosures - have placed pressure on the suburbs. Historically there has been an ebb and flow from the urban and suburban centers. This is nothing really new. The urban-scapes will most likely one day become unpalatable for a multitude of reasons and the suburbs will grow again.

The other issue is that as technologies decentralise, whether it be transport of the 1950s, telecommunications of the 80s and 90s, or maybe solar technology of the future. The large land areas of the suburbs will most likely come to the fore as productive areas again. A roof is a large solar collector for instance, more than a condominium balcony can offer. (reply)

cam, 300 words, 0 comments, Comma, Javascript, Working Life, Software Development, Javascript Lint

Sometimes a working week can be summed up into a concise and simple symbol. In the case of this week it is the comma.

Javascript is exceptionally powerful for its object literal syntax and the ability to move functions into the scope of other objects. Where once I used to complain of it giving me a black lung, now I am appreciative of its features and capabilities.

We compress out javascript down into as small a file as possible. So javascript objects which are littered across multiple modules and loaded dynamically in a development environment are compressed into just a few javascript files for production.

Browsers, especially firefox, tend to be forgiving where javascript syntax is concerned. A trailing comma in an object in firefox and safari is ok. In Internet Explorer it is not. When compressing javascript down, other issues that are fine in a raw file, such as a conditional or going across multiple lines in an if conditional, cause the page to fail as the javascript cannot be compiled by the browser's javascript runtime.

At which point it becomes a pig in a poke. Especially in large software systems with numerous teams checking in code across multiple paths, modules, packages and products. This is when the work becomes laborious and syntax checked line by line by javascript lint checkers such as jslint and javascript lint.

This week we got an operation aborted error from IE7/IE6 in our project. The issue according to Microsoft's support website was that the DOM was being manipulated before it had been loaded into the browser. It was an indirection. The issue was syntax. The lesson from this week was lint check for semi-colons, brackets and trailing commas ruthlessly in Javascript code that is going to be compressed. (reply)

cam, 213 words, 0 comments, Running Shoes, Pronate, Fitness

My old addidas shoes were in a horrible state after paintball. The shoe laces were a flourescent orange and what wasn't mud speckled and stained, was worn from age. It was time to get new shoes.

The approach these days is to take images of your walk, your instep and then get you to run on the treadmill. It turns out - courtesy of playing Aussie Rules in my youth - that I pronate very badly on both feet despite having a high instep and an even and straight walking method. I personally put this down to a broken ankle and seven sprains between the ages of 15 and 19.

Watching your ankle and feet when you run is also quite disconcerting. The amount of movement the body does that doesn't look right and how the tendons explode out and so forth. It is a wonder the human body survives the daily punishment that is handed out.

I run about twice a month, and even then only short distances and sprints. I am not someone who will run 5kms daily. I swim often, almost daily, but running I find as boring as used dishwater. Anyway I bought stability shoes. They are very comfortable and will hopefully give good service. (reply)

cam, 572 words, 4 comments, Barry Ritholtz, US Federal Reserve, Economic Policy, Bad Governance, Alan Greenspan, Crony Capitalism

Barry Ritholtz has an impassioned plea; give us capitalism or give us socialism, but not the half arsed mess of both that the US Federal Reserve is serving up in the name of politics, bad policy, poor governance and crony capitalism. The result will be to prolong the current mess of bad lending, keep the recession going and increase inflation. None of which are palatable in the long run.

Ritholtz points back to the governance of Greenspan at the US Fed who actively promoted bubbles and then bailed out losers of the bubbles by making credit cheaper so that there were no losers and speculation could continue. Capitalism works best when those that over speculate are punished for it by bankrupcy.

Without the correct signals and punishments for failure then risk simply does not exist. We saw this in the subprime markets where risk was assumed to be absent. As a consequence bad loans were made that can never be recovered. The bad governance aspect is that now the US Fed is asking for 300 billion of tax payer money to bail out private institutions - include Fannie Mae - to cover their risks made on the private markets. This is not how capitalism works. Ritholtz writes:

There is a choice to be made: Either we regulate the Banks, or leave it to the vagaries of the free markets to punish those who trade with, or place their assets in the wrong institutions. But for God's sake, do not give us the worst of both worlds -- do not allow banks the freedom to make horrific but preventable mistakes (i.e., only lending money to those who can pay it back), but then expect the taxpayers to foot the trillion dollar bill.

That's not capitalism, its not socialism, its not regulation, and its sure as hell isn't what free markets are. Our language is insufficient to describe this hodge-podge system, other than to call it a random patchwork of quasi-capitalism, quadrennial-socialism, and politics as usual. Ideological idiocy is the only phrase I can muster that has any resonance with the daily insanity.

Ritholtz makes the statement that our institutions have failed us and that this is misgovernance on a grand scale leading back twenty years. Economic policy has not been grounded in the principles of capitalism; but instead 'feelgood' politics and outright criminal behaviour. American capitalism is losing its foothold as the world's leaders in economic activity. This is being shown in the US dollar dropping in value. It is bad policy and criminal behaviour that has led to this. It is recoverable - and the US will recover - it is not dead in the water yet. But it will take a strong hand of governance and the democratic will to govern with economically sound policies.

Joshua Gans has argued for an Aussie Mac. Australia has not needed one this far, and as a country Australia has more regulation into capital markets than the US does. Australia has not been impacted greatly by the subprime mess - only Macquarie Bank and a couple of others IIRC were up to their necks in it - and while global capital will become more expensive with the turmoil from US markets, it is no excuse to subsidise home lending with taxpayer guarantees. Otherwise politics will trump economics and Aussie Mac will be used for all manner of bailouts and social engineering. (reply)