Once more into the breach

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… or close the wall up with our English dead!  OR so the poet wrote in Henry V. We find ourselves at one of those junctures in Australian political history where it is actually hard to tell what the people driving the bus are thinking about.

I’m referring in this case to Syrian refugees – although I concede I could be talking about taxation reform, climate change policy, education funding, health, or….. any number of things.

Unless I am mistaken, our gumment is currently of a mind to do two things:

1.     Take in an extra 10 or 12 thousand refugees from Syria, given the ongoing, unprecedented crisis there;

2.     Bomb Syria.

Now, walk me through this: refugee movements are usually caused by war and deprivation. War mostly though, whether it be outright, declared international war, civil war, guerrilla war, war on an ethnic population, systematic abuse and discrimination or any other cruel, pointless, atavistic exercise in victimisation. In order to comfort some thousands of people fleeing at least one of these situations (sometimes two or three) in their home country, we are going to take them in, perhaps temporarily, perhaps permanently. Details, as they say, to come. They may or may not come instead of other refugees. Details to come.  We may only take the Christian ones. Yes, really. Details….

Okay. The basic idea seems to have merit, pending details. I would however wonder out loud how the Muslim community in Australia might respond to only non-Muslims being offered sanctuary.

It’s when I come to point 2 that I have some confusion infesting my thoughts. If I was fleeing a place, and saw that Australian jets were flying back over my head to deliver nasty things to my homeland, what would I think? I’m sure there will be assurances that the Australian missions, such as they are, will not be hurting anyone except the ‘baddies’ or the ‘other baddies’, or perhaps the ‘other other baddies’, however about 4,000 years of experience tells us that it is not just these ‘bad’ folk that suffer in war. In fact, it is mostly civilians that suffer in any conflict. In fact, Australian attacks in Iraq have recently been implicated in the killing of civilians there, so the fighting in Iraq is conforming to the lessons of past wars. That is, of course, if we even chose the right ‘baddies’ to bomb in the first place.

No doubt you can see where I’m going with this. Why would we simultaneously take refugees and help demolish the place where other refugees would come from? Without getting too bogged down in history, we might say this reminds us of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam, which I think lists the last three wars we got involved in. Also I’m reminded of the situation in Sri Lanka prior to their last presidential election, where our action to aid refugees was to give the government some old patrol boats to help them stop refugees from leaving. This, in a country where disappeared political opponents and journalists were the norm and Australia ran dead on a war crimes tribunal proposition.

Just what exactly do we like so much about refugees that we seek to cause more? Or, put another way, what do we have against good government that we would seek to prevent it?

Surely it would make more sense to promote good government than engage in conflict and help generate more refugee movements. One might think that, well, in Iraq, for example, it’s far too late for that; in Sri Lanka, we could do nothing; and in Syria, we weren’t exactly on speaking terms with the Assads. This would be to ignore history. For how long were we part of a power bloc that supported Saddam Hussein? How long did we sit on the sidelines of the mess in Sri Lanka without expressing more than mild concern for Australian tourists that might venture there? What about the countries in the Middle East that would benefit from support in strengthening government – Tunisia for example? Lebanon perhaps – goodness knows there are enough Lebanese Australians to make this relevant.

But no; we are making ourselves the political victims, in international terms, of following the same tired ideas that we always have. And at home, if you know any Syrians, ask them what they think about bombing Syria and taking refugees at the same time. I don’t personally know any Syrians, but I used to know the son of Saddam Hussein’s primary school teacher: apparently Saddam was a nasty customer right from the start.

Should we not have known how that was going to turn out?

So you've joined jihad -now what?

Debate, or rather the get-tough bidding war, on the subject of radicals continues here in Australia. For some weeks now the idea that anyone from this country that goes to certain areas for any reason can be cut adrift from Australia has been out in the open.

There is a certain appeal in this. If you go to fight a war somewhere else (except in our army of course), you should just stay there and be damned. After some thought however there seem to be some problems with this approach.

First, not all of them are fighting on the same side. In other words, some are on the 'good' side, say with the Peshmerga. Still others might not be fightingat all - they might be acting as medics, or they might be women going to be so-called 'wives,' whatever that might be. So we might be condemning all kinds of people to not ever returning to Australia, even misled and victimised young women and their families who have gone to retrieve them. It's hard to see how this will decrease radicalisation: leaving people with no choices but bad ones rarely has positive result.

Now, even if all the people going over there were really fighting in the war, and in fact are basically  wrong-headed in their approach, would we really want to cut them off from ever returning? What would happen if we did? What would happen if every country in the world did this?

It seems the most obvious result would be that there would be a large pool of young, disenfranchised, uncared for, trained killers. They would be mobile, have no state loyalties, embittered, and easily led, as they would not be in touch with any influences other than whatever pseudo-religious propaganda the current warlords wanted to feed them. And if none of them had a state to return to, where would they go? They would go anywhere there were aimed at, and cause trouble there.

And when they caused trouble, what would happen? We, or others, would have to send troops to stop them. The whole cycle would start again. I can't see this doing anything except starting another, more serious, episode of war and destruction.

If they were in a proper country, they would be getting more balanced information, be subject to the rule of law, and we would be in a position to re-influence them away from whatever garbage their heads had been filled with.

I've been just this morning encouraged to see a political party, the Greens in this case, coming out with some thoughts along these lines. Logical thinking seems in short supply amongst the majors at the moment on most issues, and some considered debate is most welcome.

Is there any such thing as 'radicalisation'?

These days in Australia we hear a lot about 'radicalisation.' This is supposedly a process where bad people, mostly outsiders on the internet from the Middle East, get into the ears of innocent young locals and turn them into bloodthirsty marauders who want to go into the streets of Australia, or the war in Syria, and murder others.

This does not really seem to be a realistic description of what happens, for a few reasons.

First, the only way that these online extremists can come into contact with the young person via the internet is for the young person to search for them, or open a link they have been sent by someone else. The extremist cannot just broadcast into their phone or computer without any warning.

Second, the young person, for some reason or more than one reason, must be receptive to what they see and hear. Why would this be so? There are a number of obvious possibilities:

• they are alienated in some way - isolated socially or physically 
• from a minority group
• poor education
• social and educational disadvantage
• mental health issues such as depression
• drug use, leading to destabilised behaviour

Some of these issues have great relevance to young people. For example, a substantial proprotion of young people suffer some form of significant mental health challenge at some point in their lives. Some estimates of this range to above 30%. Mental health services for young people are well documented to be insufficient, particularly in socially disadvantaged areas. Drug experimentation also is common amongst young people, often leading to social and educational problems. The punitive/law and order response to this, rather than health-based response, leads to under reporting and surreptitious use, preventing this issue from being properly addressed.

Poor education also must be a risk factor amongst youth; education is chronically underfunded in Australia and recent political issues mean that this will get much worse in the future rather than better.

Migrant communities are commonly poorly connected to the rest of our culture. Recent political responses to multiculturalism, refugee issues and terrorism threats have only reinforced this isolation and made a number of ethnic communities feel mistrusted and further alienating them.

All these conditions predispose the young people to listen to simplistic messages that tell them how to give meaning to their lives or right injustice, or take revenge on the people that have caused their problems. Added to this is the apparent romance of fighting for a cause and being part of a brotherhood - aspects which are only emphasised in recent celebrations of ANZAC day in Australia and repetitive message about the 'glory of mateship in war' and similar ideals.

Don't forget, Australia itself has a long tradition of young men going to fight in foreign wars, from the Sudan in the late 1800s, to the Maroi War in New Zealand, the Boer War, WWI and so on.

Combined together, all these factors are a heady mix of  'pull factors' for young, somehow disaffected or romantically inclined men who want to prove themselves, to go to a war in a far part of the world to fight for a cause, no matter how misrepresented or manipulative. Rather than make more noise about radicalisation, we should pay more attention to the ways our young people are prepared to make this leap.

Refugees and revolution

As the world struggles to cope with refugee movements, the latest change in Australia's neighbourhood being the ejection of refugees from Thailand due to a crackdown there, it becomes more and more obvious that the idea of 'containment' is not only cruel, but ludicrous.

Containment means essentially to imprison people where they are, being either a country that is dangerous or non-functioning,or some kind of refugee transition or concentration camp. Containment has the fatal flaw of completely failing to address the cause of the problem. In fact, containment deliberately avoids trying to address the causes of refugee movements.

Unstable governments and undeveloped infrastructure and economies are the cause of refugee movements. By using containment, destination countries are essentially playing a game of 'keepings off' with refugees. That is, we are just keeping them away from our wealth. This is a kind of paranoid zero-sum game where we think by stopping them from moving around we can remain healthy and wealthy for any amount of time.

The problem is, containment is extremely expensive. The first round of the Pacific Solution in Australia was estimated to cost as much as $1B Australian. Currently, there may have been four times that spent in the current effort. The EU spends great amounts of money simply on search and rescue, never mind actual processing and resettlement.

Perhaps this money would be better spent on construction of basic infrastructure in developing or troubled countries, development of good government [as far as we practice it], and yes, even some early intervention in regions where there is effectively no government. I say early intervention as waiting for a civil war to break out before endeavoring to supply aid is a gross waste of time. The places to start would be countries that are reasonably stable but require help to solidify their government and provide better for their people. At least this way the world would be decreasing the likelihood of further countries collapsing and triggering refugee movements.

Australian superannuation

Treasurer Joe Hockey has said that perhaps Australians should be allowed to take money out of their superannuation to buy a house.

Superficially, this is a response to the ongoing crisis of unaffordable housing in Australia. But is smokin' Joe really just trying to feed the banks? After all, with a vast new pool of money available to leand money against, bank lendings would increase further and the size of laons - and hence the price of housing - would increase even further again.

Interesting to note that the bank sector has long wanted to get control over some of the billions of dollars 'locked up' in superannuation.  This would certainly be one way of the banks gaining control of this pool of funds.

All this while bank lending practices, predatory selling schemes, and issues like negative gearing go mainly unaddressed. At least one gonvernement minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has come out in opposition to this idea.

A small illustration of hamon styles,

Australia: how come we can't buy houses?

Australia current,y has the worst housing affordability of any developed country. In particular the major cities such as Sydney are plagued by continually rising housing costs, far above the rate of inflation. There has been talk of a housing bubble, where thousands if homeowners will be left with a property that is worth less than the mortgage they hold, however to date prices keep on rising.

The boom in housing costs goes back to the the introduction of  a 'first home owner's grant' more than ten years ago. Not only did this grant make it easier for people to raise the money for a house, the major banks and other lenders decided to accept this grant as 'savings' and so it was leveraged as part of a deposit, with the result that the loans made could be larger. People with larger home loans bid higher prices for housing, and the price rise cycle was established.

At the same time we have a tax system which includes negative gearing. This encourages people to invest in existing housing in order to write off interest payment against income tax. As a result, currently we have much more housing owned by landlords, and the bigger the loan, the more tax they can write off, so this price rise cycle is actually an advantage for housing owners. 

There have been many people comment that negative gearing does not create new housing, which was the rationale for its introduction some years ago. In addition it helps lock potential new home onwers out of the market. Politically however no government since Keating has had the courage to even discuss this issue for reform.

This is a great little talk by the artisit about a really interesting art work - Brook Andrew's Jumping Castle War Memorial, from Sydney Biennale 2010.

Sekiguchi sensei in the US

Here's a newspaper article from the US featuring Sensei's recent vist there, with a good photograph and some very nice insight into the reasons for training in iaijutsu and naginatajutsu:

Sensei in Lake Oswego.

Komei Juku Townsville seminar 2013

Full and most up to date details  for the 2013 Komei Juku seminar in Townsville, Queensland are as follows:


Sensei leave Tokyo 16th June 2013

Arrives Townsville 17th June 12n

Training 18th 9am - 5pm
Training 19th 9am - 5pm
Training 20th 2pm -8pm
Training 21th 9am - 5pm
Training 22th 9am - 5pm
Training 23th 9am - 5pm

Depart Townsville 24th June 7am


Costs are:

$350 or $100 per day  for students travelling to Townsville from other areas

Local Students:   $450 or $120 per day

This seminar continues the tradition of relieving some of the cost for those travelling longer distances to attend the seminar.

Please see the newly updated Komei Juku website for contact details or email: info@komei-juku.com.au to make enquiries. Also of course you should talk to yourl local shibucho!