<nettime> A22 digest

["nettime's_elf" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

Doug Henwood <dhenwood@panix.com>
     Re: <nettime> antipodean A16 digest
"rc-am" <rcollins@netlink.com.au>
     Re: <nettime> A16 digest

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Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 15:04:28 -0400
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood@panix.com>
Subject: Re: <nettime> antipodean A16 digest

Prof. Wark wrote:

>Your point about the devaluation of the Aussie is a good one. Trading
>at about 60 cents to the US dollar is a real boost to exports, esp.
>in the mineral and agricultural sectors. Pity about the fascist
>trade policies of Europe and America, however, which limits the
>export gain.

I'm assuming "fascist" is used here as a mere epithet, since real 
fascist economic policy tends towards extreme autarky, and the U.S. 
is quite open to the inward and outward movement of goods, services, 
capital, and even people. If the U.S. were so "fascist" in its trade 
policies, why did we run a $65 billion deficit on merchandise trade 
in the first two months of this year?

>I find the client state rhetoric a bit dated, but like all small economies
>outside the major trading blocs, the self-interested trade policies of
>the US and the EC are a real hinderance

Is that an Australian spelling?

Doug

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From: "rc-am" <rcollins@netlink.com.au>
Subject: Re: <nettime> A16 digest
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 14:49:47 +1000

Phil wrote:

> As a free-trade advocate, Mackenzie...

I cannot see how Mackenzie is the free trade advocate he presents himself, or
is taken, to be.  The song here is not freedom without exceptions.  The
singular exception in the late social democrat's embrace of 'freedom' is the
freedom for people to move across borders.

Either we can get bogged down in the simple-minded distinctions between 'free
trade v 'antifree trade', or we can dispense with the kind of farce in which
only money and commodities are seen as the limits of reality.  In other
words, until the ALP and its jaunty philosophemes are held to account for
their construction of a regime in which money and goods moved more freely,
but in which people are increasingly subject to restrictions, of movement
(immigration restrictions, detention camps, and so on) and political action
(which was circumscribed by such things as enterprise bargaining, the
Accords, etc), then this whole discussion is little more than a repetition of
the kind of 'reality' Mackenzie and his friends would like to eternalise:
ie., nationalism.  It has nothing to do with free trade, and everything to do
with what is being allowed freedom and what (who) is not.

If his complaints about Buchanan are serious -- and I do not believe for a
moment that they are -- he would not be plugging for the ALP on nettime as he
so often has.  If Mackenzie remains silent on the decisive role of the ALP in
the proliferation of detention camps -- to name the most offensive instance
of Australia's migration restrictions -- then all his blather about 'free
trade' should be taken for precisely what it is: the patriotism of the
'Australian' current account figures.   Hurrah for the 'Aussie Dollar'!
Anyone for more nationalist capitalist rivalries?  Anyone for 'Buchanan does
Australia'?

Angela
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