Whose Party?
I’m pretty much eligible to apply for dual citizenship now, and I’ll have to get to that before the next election, and probably much sooner. So long as I’m paying taxes in both countries, I might as well have all the privileges and take the responsibilities seriously. Plus, having two passports would be pretty cool, although it would be better if I could have one with a different name and pretend to be James Bond or his CIA friend, Felix Leiter. Or his ASIO friend, as the case may be.

Since my arrival, I’ve taken the Labor party to be the nearest Australian equivalent to the Democrats in the U.S., but that seems to be true only insofar as they’re number two and the party most committed to civil liberties and government support for the less fortunate, at least as compared to the Liberals. But Kim Beazely is really getting up my nose these days. Does he really think the Coalition’s proposals to effectively eliminate habeas corpusGreens or the Democrats as my party of choice here. Parliamentary politics means following the party line too much for my taste otherwise.

Big Time
Almost, anyway, with a mention in Emily Messner's Washington Post on-line weblog, crediting me for the Dick-Cheney-is-a-brain-in-a-jar theory. But that wasn't really me - not that I'm ungrateful for the nod - but the Counsellor.

The End Is Nigh
Last year the Boston Red Sox won; this year the Chicago White Sox. If next year sees the Cubs take the pennant, start planning for the Rapture.

Sedition
While I’m waiting for the new “anti-terror” laws to shoot through Parliament here, back in the States, there’s The World Can’t Wait, putting out the call to drive Bush from office November 2 . . . well, to stage a general strike and march on D.C., anyway, and just in time, now that Iraq war coalition casualties have topped 2,000 and Death’s Head Rice is slavering over Syria and Iran. And if World Can’t Wait isn’t professional enough – and they’re pretty much amateur hour – you could sign up to impeach Bush along with over 600,000 other like-minded citizens. It’s a positive step that Iraq has voted in favor of its constitution, or that the Shi’ites have, anyway, but there remain concerns over just how theocratic their model is, and with such opposition as the Sunnis have already voiced, also no indication that this is going to go very far in quelling the sectarian violence and anti-coalition attacks. Are “autonomous regions” federalism? Or just a short step from civil war? Bush has made a hash of both domestic and foreign policy and the Republicans in Congress have taken every opportunity to pork-barrel at best or steal at worst. If next week doesn’t work for you, how’s 7 November 2006?

Entertainment
I was reading a post on Crooked Timber about speculations on modern culture, specifically how gay marriage will end marriage for procreation and how the Pill destroyed courtship – either of which can be argued and may be more or less true, the only real point being “and?” – and it reminded me of something that occurred to me while watching De-Lovely and Pride & Prejudice over the weekend: once upon a time we entertained ourselves and now we just watch television. Of course, one of the things that delights us about Elizabeth Barrett in the latter story is that she doesn’t play pianoforte well and neither she nor her sisters draw or otherwise engage in such socializing pastimes, but still, when in company, conversation at least was an absolute requirement, and even into Cole Porter’s day, somebody in the room at a party would be able to play a bit. Charades, dancing, and so forth were essential elements in any gathering, even if just the family. Then came the gramophone, the radio, the television, so that today the skills, the accomplishments of others can be executed in company to the same effect as their being one’s own. Staying up late Saturday night and watching a bit of ”Rage”, which if we had cable and/or were living in the States would be MTV, it’s easy to see how television has effectively and thoroughly supplanted these previous mechanisms. Perhaps I should buy an electric guitar and learn how to play.

Cine Seen
Last night we rented De-Lovely, the Cole Porter bio-pic, which Mom & Dad have been recommending for some time now. Of the recent videos we've seen, this one was surely a stand-out, not just because it was entertaining - and how could it not be, with all those Porter songs (and even if you don't like this or that guest performer) - but because even with the artiface employed, the extended flashback sequences presented as reviewing a revue, it managed to give a real sense of the man's life. At first neither of us thought we'd endure the gimmick long, but that passed before long and we settled in with the movie for full value. While purists may complain that the music was not presented according to its chronology, that didn't bother me, not least because I don't have that information to distract me, but also because the thematic gimmick made it work. Oh, and the make-up was incredible. Man, Ashley Judd looked like she was dying, and Kevin Kline was aged, um, like fine cheese? Never mind, you get the idea.

We also headed out early today to catch the latest Pride & Prejudice. Latest? It feels like this movie's been made and seen a dozen times, but I even missed the Colin Firth version, at least most of it, so there's no real reason to feel that way other than an ingrained familiarity with the Jane Austen story. Although I watched it with great amusement, it isn't played for laughs any more than the novel was in the first place, but it is still a comedy of manners, and even knowing how it all turns out for everyone, it's tremendously entertaining. I could do without Keira Knightly, who's pretty enough, I suppose, and M.'s enraptured by the new Mr. Darcy, Matthew MacFadyen, but just the same the casting's terrific. It may be the best thing I've seen Donald Sutherland do, even just having re-watched Klute. For all that it's just another costume piece, it's high-art cinema and worth the price of admission.

When Captain America Throws His Mighty Shield
Of course, Steve Rogers was found in the Arctic, not the Sierra Mountains, but don’t you still get a little thrill when life imitates art?

And there was this little Star Trek moment the other day, too.

(All via Metafilter.)

Televisualizing
We first saw Bill Nighy in State of Play, and he was so good we even rented Love Actually so we could see more of him. Last night we watched The Girl in the Café, where this time he had a leading role. He was painfully good. The movie was, too, if a little preachy at times (which didn’t matter, given the importance of the message). If I have any criticism of the movie at all, it’s that the ending was the kind where you end up feeling as if something had been accomplished and are left focussed on the relationship part. I heard that David Byrne once said of the Talking Heads’ songs that the lyrics were only there to get people to listen to the music. Maybe, but in the case of The Girl in the Café, the love story seems to be there to get people to pay attention to the global poverty issue, and is admirably done to that effect, up until you see the final 10 minutes. I suppose it would have been too painful to leave the audience with no hope whatsoever, but I’d have taken the harder line well.

The movie played on HBO back in the States already, but if it turns up at the video shop or on broadcast there, it’d be worth a look.

Parsing the Legislation
Crooked Timber’s got an analysis of both the new industrial relations “work choices,” wherein the duplicity of the proposals is revealed, and a summary, lifted from the Sydney Morning Herald, of the new “anti-terror” legislation (which will be debated in the Senate for a maximum of 5 days) as publicly revealed by the Chief Minister of the ACT (Australian Capitol Territory).

I’ve been saying for some time now that the IR legislation is bad. It’s designed solely to put ordinary working men and women into a position of no power whatsoever, ensuring even that unions will be legally unable to assist them, before or after they’re forced to bargain away their benefits and basic working conditions. The up to AU$4,000 on offer to pay for legal consultation is only available before undertaking a court action (and will go to government-approved lawyers, not too much of a conflict of interest situation), essentially to determine if you’ve even got a case, so don’t expect much help there, either.

The so-called anti-terror legislation is similarly eviscerating of individual rights, which is no surprise. Not only are your conversations with your lawyer no longer privileged, they must be in English or translated and provided to the police. If you’re arrested under these laws you can’t talk about it. If you talk about it, you go to jail. Of course, you’re already in jail, but even if you get out you can’t talk about it. You have no recourse, ever. Fired because you’ve been arrested and released? Tough. Can’t get a job again? Tough. In two weeks, the Senate will debate these laws, and while I think we can expect Howard to make a few concessions as a result of Jon Stanhope’s pre-emptive action, they won’t amount to much and the laws will go into effect. Life imprisonment for giving money to a charity that turns out to be a front for terrorists. Non-sitting judges issuing detention orders, no review of evidence or charges by your lawyer. And slagging off the Queen is a terrorist crime.

Is this what the once-free world has come to? And I thought the USA Patriot Act was bad.

Small Business
A lot of the argument in favor of the Coalition’s attack on industrial relations focuses on the experience of small-business owners, but the Coalition doesn’t care about small businesses, except insofar as they can be merged into big businesses. Luckily, renegade National Party member Barnaby Joyce stepped up (this time) and helped defeat the legislation that would have made rapacious capitalism that much more normative. Don’t be fooled: only what’s good for big business is good for Australia, in Howard’s view, because like most successful career politicians he sold out to the corporate interests a long time ago.

Wage Slaves
“Billy” is out of work, so “Billy” takes a job at minimum wage with no overtime and no public holidays. ”Billy” is better off than when he was unemployed. That’s because, according to Howard, he has more “flexibility” in the kind of work he can accept, allowing him to “balance work and family responsibilities”, i.e., spend less time with his family in order to keep them fed. No, wait, that’s not it. He’s better off because he can have a good working relationship with his employer. Oops, wrong again. Does anybody still believe these lies?

Thou Shalt Not Keep Found Money
I’m not entirely sure how keeping AU$250,000 found in a lane is stealing. Somebody is out a quarter of a million dollars, but if nobody’s put in a claim for it, who got robbed? I suppose the most likely scenario is that it’s drug money, in which case, as ill-gotten gains, it “belongs” to the community at large, and I know that one is ethically obliged to report finding such money, but I didn’t remember it was a legal requirement to hand it over to the police. Of course, if I’d found it and kept it, I wouldn’t have had it stacked up under my desk at work.

Not Gattaca
IBM is making a promise that genetic information will not be used in hiring or the administration of benefit plans. As a significant player in the genetic data-gathering and analysis field, this is a big step, even regardless of any legislation being contemplated in Washington. The implications can be taken broadly or narrowly, but I think it points to the company leaving open the option of collecting genetic information on its employees and applicants an using that data in some other, essentially external fashion, perhaps for modelling a software or hardware application. The promise not to use it doesn’t preclude collection, after all, and I’d be seriously concerned for security, both internal and external. In the human resources field, it’s well-known that to have information is to use it, and we safeguard as much as possible the dissemination of such data as might compromise employment decisions. It’s not hard to discriminate against someone by age or race or gender in the first place, but if you know one employee is closer to 60 than another, it can color your thinking inappropriately, if not form the basis of a decision to promote or hire or not. That somewhere in the company’s databases a predisposition for John or Jane towards Hodgkins of Parkinsons or some other such degenerative disorder that might strike at any time has been recorded means that data may surface. I’d even go so far as to say that it will inevitably surface, the only questions being where and when and with what identifying markers attached. Meanwhile, insurance companies already have too much power for too little benefit. To argue on their behalf that genetic data only allows them to mitigate risk factors is little different from claiming that casinos should be allowed to mark cards: it doesn’t affect the deal, but allows the dealer to fold or stay with more precision. So I’ll applaud IBM, but I’ll keep my eyes open, too.

”Work Choices”
The new rules moving Australia from the awards system to workplace agreements, i.e., individual contracts, are being touted as promising that where such agreements do not include specifically negotiated terms for things like overtime pay and meal breaks the original award conditions will continue to apply. This is a cheat.

The rules are being touted as promoting productivity and jobs growth, but except for a few with ideologically-motivations, most economists agree that a deregulated labor market and weak or non-existent unions mean nothing of the kind. The rules are being touted as beneficial to small-business owners, presently burdened with employees they can’t fire because they can’t afford to fight an unjust unfair dismissal suit – as if those are happening with such great frequency. The promises are lies, meant to assuage working men and women while actually benefiting the large corporations eager to pay their workforce lower wages and get more of their time for free.

You may not have to sign an AWA immediately upon the legislation passing the Senate, but you will face the same conditions as anyone else. The big difference will be felt by lower-waged workers, workers covered under the awards system, workers who might once have relied on union membership, but many of whom have since come to rely on government – the awards, the awards fought for and achieved by unions – instead. But even white-collar workers are going to see an end to many of the benefits the awards had once guaranteed.

Worse, they’ll have no real protection once these law go into effect from rapacious capitalism – and face it, it’s all about making money; not for you, of course, but for the “shareholders.” Your wages reduce profits. Your meal breaks, overtime, leave loading, and so forth, reduce profits. That’s as true in the local fish ‘n’ chips shop as it is at Macquarie Bank, but the chippie isn’t the one suffering most over issues of long service leave or penalty rates, and they’re not the ones lobbying government for these changes. Don’t look for any help from the new ”Fair Pay Commission” on any of this, either. There’s a reason it’s modelled on Britains “Low Pay Commission,” and not because it oversees minimum wage rates: it’s because it’s going to set them, and hold them, low.

“Work Choices” is an inspired title for John Howard’s gutting of workers’ rights: we’ll have choices all right. We can choose to work or we can choose not to. It’s all about moral values, individual responsibility. Divide and conquer, really.

To the Editor
“Local Ink” is open source shareware developed by Downhill Battle to locate newspapers by your ZIP code and send a letter to the editor you compose. It’s the best piece of activist software I’ve ever seen. Democrats Abroad Australia have got to incorporate this. (Found on the inestimable Metafilter.)

Generation Gap
The Casssandra Pages have an interesting discussion happening on “baby boomer” culture vs. the subsequent generations, prompted by Beth’s discovering elsewhere what is also to me a surprising level of vitriol being hurled at those of us in our forties and fifties.

I’ve suspected for some time now that a significant number of the internet commentaries I follow are written by persons much younger than myself, and that they regard my generation as having caused much of the damage in the social, political, and physical worlds, and while they have a point, it’s not a very good one, even though the defense available is also much the same as the rationale these same critics often provide for why their ideas of how society should proceed are superior: incrementalism.

Those of us born in the post-World War II years up to about 1963-4 are, first of all, not as monolithic a group as we’re often portrayed. While a generation is usually considered to be a period of about 20 years, that’s a much bigger block of time than can reasonably be considered to have a formative influence over such a large population, especially because we’re talking about the years in which television became the defining medium of communication. Al Gore, in his recent address to a media conference in New York, discussed the effect of television on American society, and the “kids today” should read it. After all, while sociologists might say the baby-boom generation created or at least coined the “generation gap,” there’s always a gap; there always has been. The difference, if any distinction can be drawn, is that the gap occurs faster, at decreasing intervals, so that the 20-year generation has shrunk by now to at most a ten-year period. While my wife and I share many of the same formative cultural experiences, they’re more shared in kind than in their specifics, even leaving aside the continental separation. Nevertheless, with only five years separating us, our attitudes towards society and culture and our politics are substantially the same, whereas many people I meet substantially younger than myself have much different attitudes. I’d also suggest that this is happening in a relativistic fashion, so that as members of a generation age, their relative differences shrink, while the differences from succeeding generations grow. (There’s also the “I’m becoming my father/mother” effect to be considered, in which you can no longer distinguish the lyrics in pop music and become disenchanted with all elements of popular culture generally in preference to the forms known from your own defining decade, a concept discussed in an earlier post, wherein the decade in which you were at your best physically and stylistically remains in force throughout your life thereafter, especially as expressed in your wardrobe.)

But with a faster pace of change overall occurring outside the individual, where a slower pace of change increasingly takes hold – call it cultural inertia – for one generation, while the other keeps pace, frustrations are inevitable when institutional change doesn’t likewise keep up with the generation then coming of age. My parents were Republicans, even campaigning for Barry Goldwater, just as my older brother had become politically aware and at a time when he was also tuned in to the spirit of the age as it were, and this led to years of conflict over the dinner table, arguments raging on either side, one for increasing the pace of change, one for moderation, if not the status quo.

The changes of the 1960’s and 1970’s have been positive, in many cases, even as the restrictions imposed against other changes have also, in some cases, been positive, just as in both cases there have also been harmful results. The generation of free love (hardly a new concept anyway, so more properly birth control) and recreational drug use was also the one to usher in significant changes in civil rights, if not from within the halls of power, then by numeric force. These have been countered by draconian anti-drug legislation - a “war on drugs” – and the continued attempts to legislate reproductive health. What really characterizes the “revolution” we grew up in is a sense, mostly among our own children and their own, of failure.

The environmental movement is fragmented and ineffective, and the boomers who have joined the power centers have been either impotent to make any substantial changes or complicit in maintaining business as usual. Corporations pander to boomers even while they ruthlessly exploit Generations X and Y. What television ad doesn’t include anthemic music from the heyday of the Who, the Rolling Stones, and others? Only the one that are designed with an ever-younger target audience in mind, embedding themselves into the consciousness of children who will grow up dedicated consumers of branded merchandise. Among politicians, we’ve now had two boomer Presidents, one of whom never got enough “free love” and one who is utterly incompetent. The rest are devoted to cronyism, self-aggrandizement, and lining their own pockets at the expense of everyone else, with only a few notable exceptions – and who’d trust them under the circumstances? Enron and Tyco – run by boomers, and into the ground at that, again from greed. Other massive conglomerates, a buzzword that signalled evil to our generation – just get bigger and more powerful, while the earth’s icecaps melt and the Third World descends further into starvation and violence.

Some look at the so-called “greatest generation” and think to ourselves we are pigmies riding on the shoulders of giants; those who came before are nearly all gone now, and what was our lofty perch is just standing on our own two feet, face-to-face with ourselves, our children, our children’s children, and our failures. We are mired in our own incompetence, itself born from having taken it easy in our youth, relying on our parents to make it all right, as if we would be youths forever and never have to face our responsibilities. Personal debt soars out of control even while prices rise ever-higher, easily keeping pace with our incomes. What will be left behind for X and Y?

If we’re honest, we and the X’ers and Y’ers, what’s left is the same thing that was left for us, for our parents, and theirs, and so on, down the generations. With few exceptions in recorded history, each generation actually has built up, moved forward, progressed beyond the one before, but the pace of change isn’t a continuum. Progress is achieved suddenly, the way, in spring, one morning you see the buds on the trees greening, then, without ever seeing the change, the trees are in full leaf. The change was incremental, yet sudden, and this is the paradox we often fail to realize. The Baby Boom is making things happen, and as the energy of some of its members flags, new energy is applied from beneath. Sure, we rode our parents’ shoulders, but when our turn came, we carried them, too. This is happening now. We’ve had great moments and we’ve had failures, and the same will happen again and again. The great shame we face now is how we can hope for our successors to work according to our higher ideals rather than from selfishness, because that’s what I hear more than anything else coming from the mouths of the “kids today.”

So much effort is expended over “when will I get mine,” and the perceived vastness, in size and influence, of the boomers, compels the answer to be “only when I take it.” There are those of my generation who use this agenda for their own ends, such as the current incumbent in the White House, just as there are many in the X and Y years who aspire to higher goals and purposes than any we ourselves once envisioned, and I have my doubts that any of them will ever “get it,” even as they will often say of us. But it’s just another generation gap, just another failure to communicate, and just as easily resolved. Incremental change doesn’t satisfy anyone, either those forced into it, those stubbornly opposed to it, or those who would leap ahead into the future.

We could do more, we can and must, to provide food and shelter for those with none. The revolution isn’t over; but it has become a quagmire. With help we may yet struggle free and see AIDS drugs provided freely, for example, and drugs and medical techniques developed without a profit motive driving the pace, and a clean environment, and we may have these things without some of the compromises we’re making now. I won’t say “wait your turn,” but I will say if you really want change, if you want your share, first, learn to share and then stop complaining.

Through the Park
M. and I had a very nice day yesterday, roaming down through Hyde Park, where we saw some of Art & About: a series of large-format photos hung between the light stanchions lining the central pathway in the upper section of the park, just below the Archibald Fountain, many of which were remarkable. Although, inexplicably, the event doesn’t start officially until today (why waste the 3-day weekend?), this particular element is a favorite of ours. We’ll review the brochure for any remaining exhibits we’d like to make a point of seeing.

Later, we made our way through the Domain into the Botanical Gardens, where we visited the bats and indulged ourselves in the early summer’s heat and sun along the harbour, then back up to Darlinghurst for a spot of lunch. It’s a lovely way to spend time in such weather, although if the temperatures keep up this way we’ll have to switch to the beach before long. We’ll probably do that anyway.

Why You Should Wash Before Eating
I worked for a number of years with a woman who suffered from an ulcer. She seemed a happy and carefree person, if sometimes given to bouts of great stress over her job, and we all tried hard to help out so as to relieve her and keep her stomach calm. Sometime towards the end of my tenure with that firm, I’d heard that ulcers weren’t stress-induced, and I’ve since had occasion to wonder if J. had ever followed up on the news, which she’d initially dismissed, as the rest of the medical profession did for years, apparently, that the root of her trouble was bacteriological. Perhaps now that Dr. Barry Marshall and Dr. Robin Warren have won the Nobel Prize for their discovery of H. pylori, she’ll have done a course of tetracycline and have done with her troubles at last. (N.b.: Australia often pulls in the scientific Nobels, especially medicine, so along with socialized medicine – assuming it lasts – M. and I are in the right place for our old age, aren’t we?)

Cronos
The Counsellor points out the take on Bush’s new Supreme Court choice as characterized by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate.com: a “double-Cheney”, Harriet Miers selecting herself for Bush to nominate. Well, she’s a lawyer, and technically, I suppose, that makes her qualified. In a pig’s eye. As White House Counsel, at least she’s not America’s own Torquemada, Alberto Gonzales, but if there’s one thing we know about the Bush White House, it’s that rewarding loyalty and sycophancy are what W.’s all about. Naming an insider is the safe choice, and naming someone with no judicial record is even safer: there’s nothing to offer any insight on ideology that isn’t protected under either the client-attorney relationship or Executive Privilege. Her tenure as a bar association president is meaningless. However, her remarks at her nomination press conference, that her duty was to “strictly apply” the constitution according to the “founders’ vision” are indicative of the kind of inane literalism that extremist reactionaries like Bush prefer, ignoring that the world changes in two-and-a-quarter centuries and that the case-law principles enshrined in our government grow along with it. The selection of Harriet Miers is an attempt to put a stop-clock vote on the highest court in the land, more Thomas and Scalia drivel to tip the balance towards an unnecessary and even counter-productive conservatism. It’s a stealth nomination and should be opposed.

Bali, Again
Another terrorist attack on foreigners in Bali, clearly a reversion to 2002, given the timing, and undoubtedly the same group. Indonesia's harsh justice system will surely deal swiftly with the perpetrators, once they're caught, and hopefully this time the leadership will also be accountable.