Old Diplomacy Useless in Age of Fanatic Terror

On Hamas Saud al-Faisal Agrees with Colin Powell...
By Steven Clemons Washington Note, November 27, 2007

A brief reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

My dear Steven,

To agree with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, who is the embodiment of Saudi nepotism and has the reputation of being a political manipulator, is hardly a pass to political wisdom.

Time and time again it was a futile and wasted effort to bring Hamas to the negotiating table. You cannot entice Hamas to embrace diplomacy. You can only force it to enter negotiations by isolating it more and more from its people. And only by making it fear a revolt of Palestinians against it will it enter the discourse of diplomacy but from a weakened position and hence make its hard line demands politically untenable.

As for the constellation of bright stars from Powell, Brzezinski, to Whitman, they are all bound to fall into the black hole of their present idealistic uselessness. The diplomacy of the past was successful because one was dealing with rational actors. But in the Age of fanatic terror such diplomacy is no longer applicable and is a parody of the art of Talleyrand.

IF COALITION LOCKS-IN CONSUMER DEBT IN LAST WEEK OF CAMPAIGN IT COULD WIN ELECTION

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Presently consumer debt is unprecedentedly high in Australia. Many Australians don’t only pay-off their mortgages but also for luxuries installed in their homes, for four-wheel drives, and for yachts and boats. If the Coalition can make it evidently clear to these consumers in the next few days that these "beloved" luxuries issuing from their debt will be at a high risk of losing them under a Rudd government (remember what Paul Keating said he would do to four-wheel drives if he was still in government?) dominated by the unions, it will have more than a good chance to shift many of those consumers to its side, especially in marginal seats, who could push it over the winning line.

The Coalition’s main slogan “Go For Growth” is totally inept, unimaginative, and does not pull voters to its side as it’s too abstract in their minds. Since the major aim of the Coalition was and is--by concentrating on the economy--to discredit Kevin Rudd as an economic manager, its slogan should have been Go For Economic Security. It’s a concrete slogan and concentrates the minds of those who are heavily in debt. It also highlights the fact that under the Coalition none, with rare exceptions, have lost any of the luxuries mentioned above, whereas under a Rudd Government, the gurus of the Liberal campaign, even at this late stage, could build up the perception among those consumers in debt of the risk that many of them might lose some of these luxuries due to Rudd's economic policies.

Rudd's Prolonged Honeymoon Will End at the Approach of Ballot Box

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to Professor Sinclair Davidson’s article, titled A Perfect Political Storm May Sink Coalition, On Line Opinion, November 6, 2007


Professor Davidson presents a serious and imaginative argument on the axis of Joseph Schumpeter’s notion of “job ownership” as an answer to the puzzling question that a government that has engendered a crop of prosperity in Australia faces electoral defeat.

But there is a fundamental contradiction in his argument that torpedoes his thesis. For if “WorkChoices legislation” and the processes of the free-market—which were in existence under Kim Beazley and had hardly impacted favorably to his electoral prospects as they presumably do now with Kevin Rudd—are psychologically threatening the “job ownership” of Australians, an untested Rudd as economic manager, who can still cannot outpace Howard as a better economic manager--as he has done on other issues-- that in the electorate is almost an indelible perception and which all polls clearly show, can hardly make workers feel more secure about their job ownership under his government. Moreover a government that is perceived to be dominated by the unions which scarcely have the reputation of saving or creating jobs. In such a situation, it’s hardly imaginable that people will vote for the devil they do not really know.

I believe that there is another subjective element that tentatively answers the puzzle. It’s the prolonged honeymoon, for as yet unknown psychological reasons, of Rudd with the electorate that continuous to drive his favorable polls. They have created a momentum of success and the people who are answering the questions of the pollsters get a great frisson, a great thrill, by thinking they are riding on this winning horse. But their thrill will cease before the end of the race, that is, as they approach the ballot box. At the vicinity of the real poll on November 24, when the prospects of the two parties will be very close, “subjective reality” will be given its knockout punch by objective reality, and the electorate will chose the current economic security against the uncertainty generated by union dominated Labor occupying the treasury benches.