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Category: USA

11/08/2023

Power in America

11 August 2023

A provocative article argues that the US is abandoning its tradition Blue (Democrat) v. Red (Republican), and instead voting on economic lines, with the Red which were traditionally seen as the party of the rich actually getting the poor vote.

The polling shows that the Republicans are ahead in the poorer states, and the Demicrats in the wealthier and better educated states. This is against what was assumed to be the normal situation.

Why could this be. The Democrats are in control and supported the status quo, when they rigged their last candidate, making sure that Bernie Sanders lost preselection- twice. He would almost certainly have beaten Hilary Clinton and then probably Trump, as he called for change in the same way that Trump did. He may then have beaten Biden, but the Democrat establishment put up Biden, who was effectively the status quo.

Trump’s policies, if they can be called such, seemed mainly to tell the Establishment to go to hell and promise to send it there. It was populist nonsense in that no serious policies underwrote it in terms of real benefits to poorer people. But if you think that governments are voted out, rather than oppositions being voted in, Trump’s demagoguery has a certain logic.

Trump is, to many people inside and outside the USA, a proven crook, and many US Democrats hope that the legal process will make him ineligible to stand again, assuming he wins the Republican nomination, which looks likely. One might even wonder if there would be revolutionary forces who might try to rescue him from goal. If they can storm Congress, why not a gaol?

The fact that the Republicans can have a majority in poorer areas, despite having an anti-welfare agenda seems to show the pre-eminence of populism, the Democrats being the Established Order. The fact that Biden is the figurehead, and the Democrats seem unable to find anyone to replace him is a worry. The Republicans will target his health if he stands again. The Democrats will say that he is very healthy, and the rest of us will cross our fingers and hope his cerebral arteries last until the election at least.

The middle class is hollowed out and it is the 1% v the 99%. This is what Marx predicted, but more this is the logic of every Monopoly game- in an unregulated market the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We have been playing Monopoly since the end of WW2 and small government and deregulation has been the dominant neo-liberal paradigm.

What happens in the US will hugely affect the world, both directly, but also in the way it sets trends. It is not even a new trend. Populist right wing governments are rising in many countries, Poland, Italy, Hungary, India and Turkey. France and Germany have seen a strengthening of the Right. Military dictators have seized power in a number of African states. There does not seem much evidence that these populist strong men have made much progress in solving the problems that led to their rise to power, but having a real argument about this statement would require a lot of research.

But the US is in real trouble, and the lack of discussion of the rising inequality and what is to be done about it may well be at the core of the problem.

03/06/2023

Private Schools- part of entrenching inequality

31 May 2023

In the 1960s State Aid for Church schools was initiated in NSW. Then there became an emphasis on ‘choice’ of school and subsidies for children to catch a bus away from where the child lived to the school that they wanted to go to.

Governments, particularly conservative ones want more children in private schools as this lessens total government expenditure, though private schools have successfully demanded closer to the amount of money per student that the public schools get. The subsidies also favour their conservative voters.

Private school parents, seeking advantage for their students pay high fees so the government funding seems to be spent along with the other money on swimming pools and ‘luxury items’.

Meanwhile Australia is slipping down the world education ratings, because public schools are neglected. The sociology also needs to be considered. The ‘choice’ is only for some. The parents who do not have the financial means for a private school, nor the grades to get into a selective school have to take what they can get. I visited a school in a disadvantaged area in Sydney, and looked at the school photos in the foyer. There was not a white face in the last 15 years- all the students were either of Pacific Islander or Middle Eastern origin. The Principal said to me that she just wished she had a few Anglo students to model what the majority of Australians do. There had been a stabbing in the playground about 30 years ago, and this had led to ‘white flight’. There were also a considerable number of children with disabilities, which may be related to marriages within ethnic family or religious groups. With poorer facilities, disadvantaged students a lack of role models and teachers with lower pay, the Principal said it was very difficult to get her graduates good results and able to compete for jobs.

I live in a relatively good suburb near a place where buses can turn around. Each day 8 busses leave from close to me to go to 8 different private schools, 4 single sex male, and 4 single sex female. I think of them as Apartheid busses. The buses are all branded and new. The students getting on board can go in relative luxury from the civilised suburb to the well-endowed schools. They need have no contact with poorer folk, even on public transport. These advantaged students will go to universities, into top jobs and make decisions for us all.

I am reminded that in the US in the Johnson era there was ‘bussing’ which took more wealthy students to schools in poorer areas to make richer students aware of how the poorer student lived and to increase equality of opportunity. Australia, supposedly the land of the ‘fair go’, is now quite the opposite, subsidising inequality as we become the country with the most privatised (and unequal) education systems in the world. Now, just to emphasis the point, ‘for profit’ schools are coming in. ‘Hey, what is wrong with making a profit?’ we hear them cry.

When I went to school in Port Kembla, half the school were children of post-WW2 migrants from Europe, ‘displaced persons’, or what we would now call refugees. Half the children arrived at kindergarten unable to speak a word of English. There were 46 in my class. All this was ‘normal’. There was no anti-discrimination legislation. But the over-riding unifying factors were that all the kids in the school had the same experience, all the parents had jobs and the Housing Commission was building whole suburbs of houses as fast as they could to settle the new migrants. By the end of 3^rd class there was really no difference between migrants and Anglo-born. It was equality of opportunity, a ‘fair go’. This is what is being lost. We see the example of the US where the gap between rich and poor keeps growing and we are subsidising the same process!

We forgot about the first Gonski report on educational inequality as the politicans did not want to offend the middle class by lessening their education subsidies. Gonski was pressured to do a weaker second report and inequality of opportunity keeps growing.

The politicians tell us that their education funding has never been higher. Perhaps this is so, but while the money is spent on luxuries for some and there is not enough financially or sociologically to help disadvantaged areas, Australia will continue to slide down the international education rankings and the entrenched disadvantage that continues from generation to generation will continue.

Selling out our school system to profit multinationals

31/03/2023

The Arms Industry Distorts US and the World’s Priorities

31 March 2023

The word ‘defence’ seems innocuous enough, and discussion about is generally starts with a diatribe about the threat of Russia or China.

But just as the tobacco industry was responsible for the smoking epidemic, so the Arms industry is responsible for military spending and the consequent need to have wars to justify that expenditure.

The US has had continuous wars for many years; when one ends, another starts. The wars are not because of a threat to the US, but represent the US exerting global influence, and selling weapons to itself and others.

US foreign policy is hugely affected by its military and a perceived need for global hegemony. There is pressure on countries that seem susceptible (like Australia) to buy weapons systems (like AUKUS) to fit into this hegemonic world view. How long this can be afforded by US taxpayers is a key question; the Roman Empire imploded when its tax base could not pay for the mercenary armies that guarded its frontiers.

A list of some of the wars is; The Cold War 1945-1989, Korean War 1950-55, Vietnam 1955-75, Lebanon 1982-84, Libya 1986, Panama invasion 1989-90, 1^st Gulf War 1990-91, Somalia 1992-95 and 2007, Bosnia and Croatia 1992-95, Kosovo 1998-99, Iraq War 2003-2010, Afghan war 2001-2021, North West Pakistan 2004-2018, Libya 2011 and 2015-19, Iraq intervention against ISIL 2014-2021, and now Ukraine 2022-.

Obviously one can argue about the merits of any of these wars, but the success rate of them is not good from a US foreign policy perspective. The returns to the arms industry, however, are always positive.

But the opportunity cost of these wars in terms of the possibility of diplomatic settlement or the use of monies to address the problems in the warring parties is considerable. The loss of social services and infrastructure to the US population is probably the most critical part from a political level. Inequality and polarisation in the US are increasing with consequent social disharmony.

The arms industry has to be reined in. Its subsidies to the Australian War Memorial have tended to make this a temple of militarism rather than a place for regret and remembrance.

There was a book, ‘The Secret State- Australia’s Spy Industry’, by Richard Hall which came out in 1978 and compared the reports of the intelligence agencies of 25 years previously with the current affairs commentaries of the major daily newspapers of the same time. (The 25 years was the time for the release of the spy agency documents). The rants of the intelligence agencies and their fear-mongering were almost comic and the predictions of the major newspaper editorials were largely proved correct.

It seems that as ‘Security studies’ replace ‘History ‘ in university courses likely to result in graduates getting jobs, the people who teach world events are changing their perspectives, and not for the better. Our current policies with AUKUS would seem to derive from a believing a current spy’s paranoid world view. The Arms Industry is to be feared and opposed in Australia as well as the US.

Congress Has Been Captured by the Arms Industry

31/03/2023

UN Security Council Rejects an Investigation into Nordstream Pipeline Sabotage

29 March 2023

On 27 March the UN Security Council rejected a Russian motion to have a UN investigation into the sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines on 22 September 2022.

Interestingly there were 3 votes in favour, Brazil, Russia and China and 12 Abstentions. No votes against! The abstentions were from the US, UK, France, Gabon, Switzerland, Ghana, Ecuador, Malta, Japan, Albania and the United Arab Emirates. The reason mostly given for the abstentions was that there are already investigations going on by Germany, Denmark and Sweden.

China’s representative pointed out that the UN investigation could encompass and cooperate with all these, and that blocking the Council from launching and investigation only raises suspicions that ‘something is being hidden’. He tactfully did not say that any national investigation would have to be filtered through that country’s foreign policy considerations.

Of course, the elephant in the room was the report published on February 8 by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh which claims that U.S. President Joe Biden and his senior White House staff ordered the Pentagon to take out the natural gas pipeline that runs along the Baltic Sea bed from Russia to Germany.

https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15243.doc.htm

15/03/2023

Keating Attacks the AUKUS Submarine Deal at the National Press Club

15 March 2023

Paul Keating attacked the AUKUS submarine deal at a conference at the National Press Club today. He was at his scathing best, and put together the arguments well, as he always does.

In essence he said that a scare campaign had demonised China with a lot of Cold War rhetoric from the ‘spooks’ and convinced Morrison, who was always happy for a headline to get some publicity for his flailing government.

Labor was scared to losing the election by being ‘soft on defence’ so went along with whatever the Liberals wanted. So Labor has been conned by the spooks and the Liberals as well.

Keating says we have a defence policy, rather than a foreign policy, and Senator Wong running around the Pacific ‘handing out money with a lei around her neck’ is not a foreign policy.

The US wants bases here, to lock Australia into their side in the confrontation with China and to sell expensive submarines. As Keating points out, at the circus in San Diego, only one country was actually paying- Australia.

He also ridiculed Australia for involving Britain, pointing out that in 1942 they left Singapore and in 1968 announced an ‘East of Suez’ policy that meant that they would not do much here. They then joined the EU, leaving the Commonwealth to its economic fate, and would have stayed with the EU, but for the mistake of Brexit, created by Boris Johnson et al who had silly dreams of bygone Empires. Since the UK has left the EU they are trying to have a ‘global strategy’, but they do not have much choice. But this is not economic relevance, and Australia is just being silly to go back to there for its military security.

As far as the submarines are concerned, he points out that the cost of 9 nuclear submarines would pay for about 45 conventional ones. If one about 1 in 3 can be at sea at the same time, which is what most navies manage, that means 3 nuclear at sea rather than 15 conventional ones. And even if the 15 have to surface, this is only about every 3 days if they are cruising, and there are 15 for an enemy to worry about. The nuclear subs are 8,000 tonnes as opposed to 4,000 tons, so are likely to be able to be found almost as easily as the conventional ones as detection technology evolves. They will also only carry the same torpedoes as the conventional ones, so their strike power will be 3 v 15.

Some years ago, I read an excellent book, ‘The Secret State’ by Richard Hall published in 1978 which looked at the reports from the spy agencies during the Cold War in the 1950 and 1960s and contrasted these with the conventional media editorials and opinion pieces of the time. The spy analyses were full of paranoia and worries about the Russian threat if we did not immediately spend a lot of money on defence. The major newspapers looked at what was happening and made more sanguine comments about economic and trade relations. Years later, things had panned out much as was expected in the major media. The spy scare stories were almost absurdly laughable. It seems that in this case the spies have convinced Morrison, who has taken the Liberals, now Labor down this absurd path that we and our children will pay for.

The Liberals have said that they will be bi-partisan as Labor makes budget cuts to pay for it. What will go? Stage 3 tax cuts? Jobseeker pay rises? Pensions? Medicare? NDIS? Subsidies to private schools or private health insurance? Tax exemptions to religious organisations or Super contributions? The Liberals were happy to cut all social welfare, but no doubt having made the initial commitment to bipartisanship will still criticise any actual cuts as they come along.

The Chinese, presumably will now continue to make our trade difficult. They are a rising power that is unlikely to invade us, and we should work within this framework. It is called realism.

Here is an article on SBS: ww.sbs.com.au/news/article/former-colonial-master-paul-keating-launches-astonishing-attack-on-labor-aukus-deal/we38qsi9s

Here is the interview on youtube:

08/03/2023

Outrageous Nonsense on China and Defence

8 March 2023

I confess I was flabbergasted at the SMH front page yesterday (7 March), which blazed ‘Red Alert: War Risk Exposed’ with an illustration of many aircraft taking off from China. On pages 4-6, there was more tub-thumping.

Today’s SMH has a front page ‘Conflict over Taiwan could reach our shores’; and pages 4-5 continue the story.

It might be noted that the Government in a foolish but bi-partisan (i.e. Liberal + Labor) decision will announce the AUKUS nuclear submarine delivery shortly.

Perhaps this silly story is to mute any criticism of the AUKUS decision.

To make a few relevant comments:

There is sadly not a Peace voice that is consulted. To be blunt the activist groups have not structured themselves effectively.

China is now a rising world power and will overtake the US, which like many declining powers is spending too much on arms, largely because the privatised US arms industry needs markets. China does not need to be belligerent. Its expansion to the Belt and Road initiative is to take it all the way across Asia and Europe by land, and merely relies on people wanted to trade with it. It is effectively the biggest market in the world. China has fortified some islands in the South China Sea, but it is the US that has bases close to China, not China to the US. No Chinese warships sail around the Caribbean.

China will eventually reach an accommodation with Taiwan, whether the world likes it or not. The US may want to delay this as the Taiwanese have the world’s best microchip technology and they do not want this to fall into Chinese hands, but most technological secrets leak eventually. The US has accepted a ‘One China’ policy for years so it can import Chinese goods. It is concerned about the ‘democratic rights’ of the Taiwanese, but the US has been very selective about whose democratic rights they support or don’t. If they seek to have a war ‘sooner rather than later’, this would seem to be a bad long-term strategy. Germany continued to rise after its WW1 defeat because its economic fundamentals were right. Militarily Taiwan does not have the manpower to hold out against China in a military conflict, 24 million v. 1.4 billion says it all. The US has aircraft carriers, but hypersonic missiles will sink them as soon as their guidance systems improve, so the carriers are soon likely to be as obsolete as battleships were in WW2.

As far as Australia is concerned, we can be a quarry, a food bowl and manufacture as we are able in the world economic system, and we should retain control of our resources and bargain intelligently with our customers. China, however powerful, is likely to accept this situation.

The AUKUS submarines are a very expensive step into nuclear confrontation. We are buying submarines at top dollar with an uncertain delivery date and huge opportunity cost for other projects, defence and civil. We will have to have a base that services them, and no doubt the US will want to use that base for its nuclear fleet. So we are being sold subs that we do not need and being locked into a US confrontation that benefits no one but the US arms industry. Since China is unlikely to attack us, and our subs would not be decisive in any highly improbable direct conflict with the Chinese, they are merely a needless insult and a decisive move into the American camp in a polarised paradigm.

It is probably true that our defence has been neglected for a decade; the decadent Liberal government had precious little coherent policy on anything, but that is not an argument for AUKUS submarines.

The Herald has been extremely disappointing. Paul Keating has said some sensible stuff. Will no one in power speak some realistic truth?

If only our current PM said this…

04/01/2023

At last; some sense on Defence- but not from Kim Beasley.

4 January 2023

We have to be self-reliant and we have to distance ourselves from the USA, which seems to have a government controlled by its ‘defence’ industry’s need for wars.

Once defence minister’s spending fiction and the big sell-out

03/01/2023

Flaws in Constitutions

3 January 2023

The US Constitution has many flaws. The most conspicuous being the ‘right to bear arms’ which is taken as the right for every citizen to carry guns around the place, with predictable consequences. There is also state controlled voting rights, which get fiddled and the right of elected governments to draw the electoral boundaries, a sure-fire recipe for dodgy electoral system. It seems the US Supreme Court has managed to give itself a privileged position and now precedent cements this.

Of course the major problem is that the US Constitution was made to be almost impossible to change so all these flaws are perpetuated, the latest problem being that Presidents can appoint Supreme Court judges for life and these judges now override the legislatures by saying the law is against the Constitution, as in the case of abortion.

How the US will fix this is not of academic interest. The Australian Constitution was not some document of all wisdom for all time; it was made with the overriding imperative to get the 6 colonies into one country. All the power except marriage, tax and foreign policy was given to the States. Looking at how Australia works in practice, one would not even guess this. We have uniform laws only because the state Ministers work out ‘template legislation’ and all State Parliaments pass it unamended. About a third of all State legislation and certainly the most important stuff it this, with the States Parliaments serving as very expensive rubber stamps.

Now we have major constitutional changes suggested, a Voice to Parliament for Aboriginal people and removing the English monarch of head of State and creation of a Republic.

It would be better if there were some other changes also. My favourite would be to move towards proportional representation and to allow citizens referenda to override Parliaments, and to limit the terms of Parliament so that political party hierarchies could not have such significance. This would be a move to more of Swiss-style constitution, as was suggested but discarded as it was not Anglo in 1899 at the Constitutional discussions then. The German constitution, which was written by Winston Churchill to ensure that no single party could ever have a majority, or even the changes in the NZ voting system which made it unlikely could, also be considered. We have to recognise that we have the same problem as the USA, a fossilised constitution that needs significant change. It is ridiculous that we do not have the confidence even to talk about this. Change is not easy, but that is hardly the point. Are we inferior to our great- or great-great-grandfathers that we cannot plan our future?

US Constitution’s flaws on show

Nick Bryant SMH Columnist, 3 January 2023

A plan by the probable next US House Speaker to read the Constitution aloud could have unforeseen consequences.

For more than a quarter of a century, American politics has doubled as a civics lesson from hell. The Clinton years introduced us to the impeachment process, something not witnessed since the mid-19th century. The disputed 2000 election reminded us of the vagaries of the Electoral College and revealed how the Supreme Court could intervene to determine the outcome of a presidential election – who knew? The January 6 hearings, which culminated in the first-ever referral of a former president to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, served both as a primetime crime drama and a tutorial in constitutional law.

To mark the opening of the 118th Congress today, the Republican Party intends to conduct its own teachable moment. If he wins the House Speakership – a contest that looks like it will provide a lesson in the chaotic state of the modern-day GOP – the Republican leader Kevin McCarthy intends to read in its entirety the US Constitution on the floor of the House of Representatives.

This ritual will border on the liturgical. The Constitution, despite Donald Trump’s recent threat to terminate it, has taken on a near Biblical status. Its framers are regarded as patron saints. Yet Americans who listen in may well be shocked to hear these portions of scripture take on a different meaning when placed in their rightful context.

No passage has been more misappropriated than the Second Amendment, which notes that ‘‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed’’. As people will hear, however, the primary focus of the founding fathers was the creation of a ‘‘well-regulated militia’’ rather than the firearms they would carry. The intention was to guard against a standing army, which in post-revolutionary America was seen as a tyrannical throwback to the days of British rule.

For almost 200 years, then, the Second Amendment was often referred to as the ‘‘lost amendment’’ because in an America that ended up creating a professional fighting force, the US military, it was considered obsolete. Not until 2008, following a decades-long propaganda campaign by the National Rifle Association to twist and falsify its meaning, did the conservative-leaning Supreme Court make the Second Amendment the constitutional basis for individual gun ownership.

Those who listen in might be surprised to hear how little the Constitution says about the Supreme Court, despite its omnipresence in modern politics. Nowhere does it state that the court should be the final arbiter of whether laws passed by Congress are legal. Judicial review, the ability to declare an act of Congress or presidential executive action unconstitutional, is a power that the Supreme Court granted itself in the early 19th century.

The irony is that the court’s hardline conservative justices are driven by a philosophy of jurisprudence known as originalism, which determines controversial rulings, such as the overturning of Roe v Wade, based on their interpretation of the original intent of the Constitution. Yet the founding fathers never intended the Supreme Court to hold such sway. ‘‘The judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power,’’ wrote Alexander Hamilton. Thus this right-wing philosophy falls at the first historical hurdle. Originalism is the enemy of originalism.

Defenders of American democracy may also be disappointed by what they hear, for nowhere in the Constitution is there a positive assertion of the right to vote. The original intent of the founding fathers was that only white men of property should be enfranchised, although they left it for the states to decide.

Over the years, as the electorate expanded, voting rights came to be framed in a negative way. The 15th Amendment, which was ratified in 1870 after the Civil War, stated voting rights ‘‘shall not be denied’’ on account of ‘‘race, colour, or previous condition of servitude’’.

In the 1930s, the 19th Amendment finally decreed that women ‘‘shall not be denied’’ the vote. But voting has sometimes been called ‘‘the missing right’’ because the Constitution does not explicitly and positively spell it out.

‘‘We the People,’’ the rousing words in the preamble of the Constitution, were certainly never intended as a statement of great participatory or populist intent. Indeed, the whole point of the Constitution was to guard against the tyranny of the majority and what its aristocratic authors called an ‘‘excess of democracy’’.

Following the American Revolution, the Constitution was designed to be a counterrevolutionary text; what the Harvard historian Jill Lepore has called ‘‘a check on the revolution, a halt to its radicalism’’. Maybe that explains why Kevin McCarthy is so keen to read it out. The Republicans are a minority party increasingly reliant on the founding fathers’ minoritarian model of democracy.

They have lost the nationwide vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections, but the Electoral College gives them a shot at the White House. The power granted by the framers to small states, which were allotted just as many senators as the most populous states, artificially inflates the Republican Party’s influence in the Senate. The original decision to allow states to determine voting qualifications has enabled Republican-controlled state legislatures to suppress the vote.

Hopefully, the reading of the Constitution will remind citizens of its flaws and how this American gospel is in desperate need of revision. But therein lies the constitutional catch-22. The founding fathers made it fiendishly difficult to amend.

Dr Nick Bryant is the author of When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present. Peter Hartcher is on leave.

24/11/2022

The US is in Trouble and we with it.

24 November 2022

The re-election of Biden and the much-hyped failure of the ‘Red Wave’ at the US mid-term elections has given rise to the perception that although the US is deeply divided, it will be OK.

Sadly, this is probably not the case. In the Anglo world, people do not really win elections, they lose them and the alternative gets in. The quality of the alternative is often not considered. Trump was generally seen as a narcissistic psychopath, who did nothing but criticise and create fantasies. He lost the election, but continued the fantasy that he was robbed, despite the fact that the US electoral system is quite corrupt with the politicians setting their own electoral boundaries and changing the voter registration rules to rort the system and actually hugely favours the Republicans.

President Biden got in, but inflation has hugely increased, leaving the US, with its very poor welfare system in real trouble. Traditionally the ‘mid-term’ elections decimates the party in power. So the Democrats were supposed to be decimated by a ‘Red wave’, (red being the colour of the Republicans remarkably enough). Because of the memory of Trump’s incompetence and the poor quality of the Republican candidates, the Democrats retained control of the Senate, but narrowly lost control of the House of Representatives.

So things may appear to be stable. But the US is a deeply divided country, quietly sinking as a world power, and though the Republican majority is slim, they will be able to frustrate any action that Biden and the Democrats try to take to improve the situation. And if nothing improves, the government i.e. the Democrats will be blamed next election.

So who are the Rebublicans who are likely to choose? Front-runner for Republican Presidential candidates is Florida governor, Rick DeSantis. Sadly, he is almost Trumpian in his simplicity and wants to lump all progressive policies together as ‘woke’ (a word that is really extending and working overtime). So the tried and true formula of not being ‘for’ something, but being against ‘woke’ or ‘marxism’ (hey, what’s the difference) will be used to turn against any progressive ideas and look after the big end of town. This could be called fascism, but perhaps we should avoid name-calling at this stage.

How any of this will fix the huge problems in the US is beyond my ken, but when the US becomes dysfunctional the ramifications for the world, including us are likely to be significant, particularly if we continue to follow their policies like lapdogs.

DeSantis’ ideology is clearer, darker and more coherent than Trump’s

05/11/2022

The Twitter Story- and the bigger subtext

5 November 2022
Elon Musk likes to play in every game. His car company existed on hope for many years, but has at last ramped up production. He is in software, AI, batteries, cars infrastructure with tunnelling and trains, space rockets, investments, and now politics.

Twitter has established itself as the world’s political events exchange platform. A new concept like Twitter, which allows direct person to person contact was a good idea. Naturally if there is to be a conversation, everyone has to be in it, so a monopoly system is favoured if the system is new and is seen to work. So Twitter has become unique and immensely powerful. But the technologies that have everyone able to have an equal voice enable radical and socially damaging perspectives to be aired and publicised, legitimised by their ubiquity. Radical groups can link up with others anywhere, adding strength to isolated opinions and tending to lead to discussions that become even more radical and may lead to action.

So the social effects of the new technologies have created new and effectively unaccountable power structures. The regulation of these can be by government edict, as in China, or left to the corporate owners as in the West. Both these regulatory actions and the lack of them are controversial and many have long term political and social effects.

Now Elon Musk seems to have offered to pay too much for Twitter. He tried to withdraw his offer, but was forced to honour it. Having paid too much, he now wants to cut staff numbers radically. I was under the impression that social and political pressure was making Twitter more responsive to concerns about its social and political effect and its staff were part of an effort to minimise any harm it might do. If this is so, it is likely to be, no staff = no action.

So looking at Twitter as purely a financial entity verges on the absurd, but that is what is happening. And a financial mistake by Musk, and his corrective action in sacking people may have considerable effects. Commentators are already talking about the polarisation of US politics and the rise of violence with the storming of the US Capitol and the easy and unsophisticated attack on Paul Pelosi.

So the subtext of the situation is that an unregulated world market allows the immense concentration of power such that when the world’s richest man corrects what is for him a relatively minor financial error a major world information system is significantly disrupted and may become dysfunctional. (Whether it was considered dysfunctional before is a matter of opinion- it is hard to get an exact understanding of how much power the Twitter information model has).

One of the more ridiculous features of our society is that those with money, or who know about it are assumed to know about everything. They know about money, and have usually specialised in making it to the exclusion of other concerns. Often, it is dubious that they have the faintest idea about the implications of their actions.

Because the world’s economy advisers have allowed the world to become just a market we have the equivalent of elephants in China shops and we wait and wonder which way they will turn. A more cynical view would be that we have a situation where the playthings of the rich can have massive uncontrolled consequences and there are no regulatory mechanisms that have either the will or the power to influence the situation in the public interest.

The jobs of the Twitter employees are the tip of a very large iceberg, and the stories of Twitter’s share price have a much larger subtext. Here is an article from today’s SMH:

Twitter staff shut out as global purge starts
Zoe Samios, Nick Bonyhady

Twitter Australia staff were being locked out of their company accounts yesterday as billionaire Elon Musk’s job cuts hit the local office in Sydney, which employs about 40 people.
Musk told confidants he planned to eliminate half of Twitter’s workforce to slash costs at the social media platform he acquired for $US44 billion ($70 billion) last month.
Local staff in marketing and news curation were shut out of Twitter’s systems after receiving an email signalling layoffs but without any official confirmation that their jobs were being axed. Others were waiting to see if they would still have a job come Monday.
One employee said there was a sense of relief. ‘‘It’s not the company that we joined, and it’s not the app that we all love any more,’’ they said.
Others familiar with the company said the news team, which selects articles on topical moments in the national discourse, is among the largest local units and had about 10 staff. Some communications staff for the Asia-Pacific region have also been locked out.
Twitter’s local public relations representative declined to comment.
Australian staff received an email yesterday morning saying Twitter would ‘‘go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce’’. Staff were to be told whether they still had a job via email by 9am Pacific Standard Time, or 3am AEDT yesterday, but the lockouts started early.
‘‘We recognise that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward,’’ the email, which was obtained by the Herald, said.
The Herald revealed in July that Twitter was closing its Australian office in Sydney, with staff to work from home.
All told, Musk wants to cut about 3700 jobs at San Francisco-based Twitter, people with knowledge of the matter said this week. The entrepreneur had begun dropping hints about his staffing priorities before the deal closed, saying he wants to focus on the core product.
‘‘Software engineering, server operations & design will rule the roost,’’ he tweeted in early October.
Twitter was sued over Musk’s plan to eliminate the jobs, with workers saying the company is doing without enough notice in violation of federal and California law. A class-action lawsuit was filed on Thursday in San Francisco federal court. The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act restricts large companies from mounting mass layoffs without at least 60 days’ notice.
Security staff at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters carried out preparations for layoffs, while an internal directory used to look up colleagues was taken offline on Thursday afternoon, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Employees have been girding for firings for weeks. In recent days, they raced to connect via LinkedIn and other non-Twitter avenues, offering each other advice on how to weather losing one’s job, the people said. with Bloomberg