Aww

Look, they think they're people. I mean hairbrushes.

Give Me Your Educated
Not to be outdone, the U.S. has unveiled a new citizenship test, and I don’t do well on the sample. I was off by one on the number of amendments to the Constitution, but I was way off on the number of legislators in the House. I also would have failed on describing the amendments on voting and the privileges of citizenship (too vague), and the authors of the Federalist Papers. You have to get 6 out of 10 to pass, and there’s a language component, where, I suppose, even if I do more often spell “color” as “colour” these days, I’d still get through o.k., not that it would matter, since I’ve failed the civics test already.

I shouldn’t admit these kinds of things so publicly.

Anyway, an outline of the new requirements, including a breakdown of the civics test questions is available from immigration.

Opening Closed
The Burmese situation continues to deteriorate, although, as Foreign Minister Alexander Downer so helpfully noted, we don’t yet see tanks in the streets (isn’t he sweet?), so the problem outside Myanmar remains as it has for the last 30+ years: how do we change their society? Economic sanctions have been in place between the U.S. and Burma for some time now, to one degree or another, but little has changed. Frequent diplomatic pressures have been applied, again to no particular effect. Australia’s trade with Burma is limited only in respect to weapons, but exports to Burma well exceed imports, so without full participation in a system of trade sanctions, the government sees no utility in cutting them off. (Besides, we get a lot of prawns for the BBQ that way.)

Seriously, sanctions are problematic. Look at South Africa: it took decades of official and unofficial sanctions before they finally dissolved apartheid. The U.S. blockade of Cuba was of limited duration, and the imposition of trade restrictions did nothing, since the rest of the world was only too happy to buy their sugar and cigars. The UN oil-for-food program of sanctions against Iraq was a laughable effort, easily rorted, even by the sanctioning nations, let alone the dictator himself. Trade between the USSR and the USA and its allies, although carefully limited on either side, probably did more to open up the former and depose communism than not selling them wheat and Levis and Pepsi would have (which isn’t to deny that the arms race didn’t have a significant effect, insofar as it ultimately bankrupted the economy of a bankrupt economic system, although the personality stakes between Reagan and Gorbachev also probably helped, insofar as Ronnie came off more willing to act on disarmament unilaterally than did his counterpart, whose half-measures, Perestroika and Glasnost, were more late-night joke fodder than they were newsworthy steps towards normalization).

So what, then? Sanctions on the poor? Or cut free trade? There are already those calling for military intervention, but that’s Bush-style regime change more than it’s anything resembling the Timorese intervention.

On Strike
Garret Keizer suggests a general strike across America on Election Day 2007. Sounds good. In fact, I suggest we do the same thing here, in Australia, until John Howard calls the election. (Found on Metafilter.)

The Nuremburg Offense
Peter Phelps, the Chief of Staff for the “Special Minister of State,” Gary Naim, attended a public forum recently and criticised a Labor candidate’s service as a soldier in Iraq as incompatible with ALP policy, which is to withdraw Australian troops, should the Opposition take government at the next election. In response to Colonel Mike Kelly’s response that he did what he was order to do, Mr. Naim invoked the Nazis: "Oh, like the guards at Belsen perhaps? Are you using the Nuremberg Defence?" Mr. Naim has faxed an apology to the Colonel. (Faxed? Couldn’t make a personal apology, could he? Couldn’t even make a public apology.) Labor has responded by calling on Mr. Naim to sack Phelps, but he has resisted these calls, claiming Mr. Phelps was attending the event in his capacity as a private citizen.

This wouldn’t be notable, particularly, although I think such comparisons are odious, except that it illustrates a significant problem in the Liberal Party: they refuse accountability. Mr. Phelps cannot attend an event hosting the Opposition candidate for his bosses’ seat as a private citizen, because he’s Chief of Staff to the sitting member, but if he wishes to attempt to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, he should at least keep to a more modest behavior than attacking the usurper. Mr. Naim should indeed sack Mr. Phelps; in fact, Mr. Phelps should be removed by John Howard from whatever position a “Special Minister of State” may be.

Where have we seen this before? Didn’t read the AWB memos that revealed their bribes to Saddam Hussein in the lead-up to the present war? Well, that’s no biggie. Didn’t reveal and discharge stock holdings in companies whose business was under the oversight of your portfolio? You shouldn’t lose your job over something so picayune, should you? Knew all along that nobody was throwing their children overboard but said so anyway? Re-elect that man!

It’s all gone on long enough, and yet the Coalition trails Labor by only 10% in the opinion polls. Their approval ratings ought to be in the gutter, right along with their actions.

All Bets Are On
Is it strange that the NSW government – Labor – have decided to authorize Keno games in hotels now, although the ALP Federal Opposition Leader, in the lead-up to the national election, is calling for a review of poker machine licensing, in respect to weaning state governments off that revenue source? Maybe not.

Meanwhile, mad props, as they say, to the Rabbitohs, who are planning to scrap the pokies from their club. As the inner city Leagues club, long located in Redfern, this is a socially responsible move, a signal to the community that I’m sure will be widely recognized and welcomed.

Send Michael Crichton
Mystery meteorite malady plagues Peruvians.

Surveillance
If the Mr. Lee CatCam comes with auto-flash, I might just spring for one, given the tuxedo cat’s new (ish) tendency to stay out late. Maybe it’d be worth two, so that I can find out if his brother follows him around, or if they go their separate ways. Still US$60, while cheap enough for a digital camera, is a lot just to follow the cats around when I’m not home.

Buoyancy
There was an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show when the staff were charged with writing celebrity obituaries and, in a recklessly flippant mood, said of Raquel Welch “at least we know she didn’t drown.” This came to mind – and I admit my own mental health reservations as a result – when I heard the news about the Australian navy paying for breast jobs.

I swear I’ve heard this story before, but maybe it was cosmetic surgery in the U.S. armed forces. It’s pretty silly, all the same, but perhaps it will revive one of the most revered advertising campaigns of all time.

Manufacturing Loyalty
After the Gonzales debacle, and now approaching his final year as President, you might think Bush would use some other method than cronyism or extremist partisanship in selecting a new Attorney General, but there’s no evidence he will. Theodore Olsen doesn’t sound like he should still be admitted to the bar, let alone take on the top spot at the Justice Department. And George Terwilliger? Doesn’t anyone in the White House watch The Simpsons?

Our Expanding Universe
Remember that bit in Annie Hall where the young Alvy Singer tells the doctor why he won’t do his homework anymore? “What’s the point?” he says, “the universe is expanding.” That’s kind of my reaction to the news that the Earth may survive the sun’s demise. Oh, no, wait; I’m more like the doctor: “It won’t be expanding for billions of years yet.” Also, since all life on the planet would be wiped out, am I expected to retain some proactive nostalgia for a big rock? Only a physicist could be that sentimental, apparently.

Six Years
ObL’s putting out more video than Britney, and the best we’ve got is speculation on what his beard means?

Black and White and Red All Over
Pedestrian safety is a problem in Sydney, as Sydney City Council is now aware. Despite red light cameras, “zebra” crossings, and other measures designed to ensure a foot-friendly city, from Circular Quay to the Blue Mountains, drivers here are among the most aggressive I’ve ever seen. O.k., it’s not the kind of chaos you see in Asian metropolises or the wild-style driving of Rome, but it also isn’t volume or just carelessness. Admittedly, jaywalking is an issue, although far less so than Professor Gehl seems to be suggesting, but I don’t have a problem with traffic buttons at the crosswalks (if they work; usually they’re just there for a placebo effect). Whether or not Sydney is “like a doughnut” is debatable. There was a long period of time when commerce essentially drove out residences, which is a shame, since the result has been that after dark there are only a few venues hosting events or otherwise having any value in attending – you can go out for a night on the piss anywhere, so you might as well do it close to home, instead of spending premium prices for the same result; meanwhile, how many nights do you want to spend at the Opera House, when for a fraction of the price you can go see The Bourne Ultimatum or rent a DVD?

(By the way, Matt Damon is Jason Bourne, and those movies are better than drugs; you come out feeling totally jazzed, fast and alert, your brain buzzing with the theme music. What a trip. Who cares if the ending is implausible?)

I’ve noted before, however, that Amsterdam closed its CBD to traffic, and London’s got (and NYC wants) a CBD toll. Reports from London suggest that measure has been very effective, reducing time stuck in traffic significantly, something on the increase in Sydney, notably on weekends. Apparently, traffic during the week is so bad, people are waiting for Saturday to come into the city, with the result being massive jams building up seven days a week. As the population builds in the western suburbs, without the commercial enterprises to support them locally, whether in employment or entertainment, they’ve all got to funnel into the center, so there’s just one more factor at work.

Melbourne famously kept its tram system, whereas Sydney lost ours decades ago, so its last 15 years of transformation may have been more easily accomplished than what we can manage. I’ll be interested in hearing what the professor comes up with, if anything, or the Council – our Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, is no stranger to taking on the lightning rod issues, so she may go for broke on this one – and also hearing what happens after he’s spent time in my hometown, where he’s off to next.

We Didn’t Start It
Howard uses the ‘s’ word: ”Sorry you’ve been inconvenienced,” he says, but it’s not his fault, or the fault of the NSW government, or the police. No, it was all the fault of people who “would threaten to resort to violence” - would threaten, notice; because there was no explicit threat, just the usual fear-mongering. Besides, it was only ever about Bush, wasn’t it? Does anyone think for a minute that downtown Sydney would have been fenced off if Bush hadn’t been visiting?

Meanwhile, while the police reject out of hand that they went over the top on security, reports of their actions, particularly regarding the demonstrators, are pretty unambiguous. There were only 18 arrests, including a man on his way to brunch with his children, and four of whom were released without charge, one who threw a dart at a cop, and one who squirted ketchup at a pro-Bush demonstrator and hit a nearby officer. Some reports have indicated that leaders of the Stop Bush protest march were targeted after their demonstration from a list held by police, indicating that although they complied with the terms of the march dictated by police and under court order, the police went after them anyway.

(Stop Bush is pretty useless, since he’s only got a little more than a year left in office, the protestors are pretty much all Australians and therefore unable to influence him or his party or American politics generally. Stop Howard, I say.)

Police in this country have a long, troubled history. Rampant corruption, with multiple scandals subject to Royal Commission investigations, a predilection to “verballing” suspects (i.e., making false statements to back up an arrest or ensure a conviction), and a documented tendency towards heavy-handed and even brutal tactics whether dealing with individuals or groups, all contribute to fostering the divide between the police and the community, and become self-reinforcing. Law and order is necessary for a functioning society, but we’re also supposed to be a democracy. None of this is helped by a complicitly quiescent press.

APEC was just a dog-and-pony show, but the excess security and police actions will further damage Howard’s standing in the polls.

Ghost Town
One good thing about APEC is that so many people have left town, getting a seat on the bus and train isn’t an issue.

I was home with the flu for Bush’s arrival and first press conference, but I shouldn’t have watched. That man’s tone of voice drips with insult. The substance of what he says is more or less reasonable, but he comes off as a bully. Of course, he is a bully, so it’s not really a surprise, but it’s still annoying. That, and he won’t answer the question posed, although most politicians refuse to provide a direct response.

The pictures of the “exclusion zone” are remarkable. The security fencing and the massive police presence are clear evidence of just how far democracy has degenerated. I accord a fair share of blame to those “black hat” protesters who attend these events with the intention of inciting the police (although I also note that the police commonly use provoking tactics, and even agents provocateurs, themselves) and committing acts of violence or property damage; there’s no excuse for them. My main complaint remains, however. We have given in to fear – or our leaders have – to such a degree that significant numbers of Sydney residents have left town for the duration, and great swathes of public land, including major tourist attractions, have been set aside, reserved for APEC delegates, most of whom will spend very little time anywhere near them. Bush’s calvacade was embarrassing. Hundreds of Secret Service agents accompany him and his party. Snipers are deployed on rooftops and in helicopters. Police cruise the foreshore in boats and on jet skis. Does anyone think any of this would be in place if Bush wasn’t attending?

Surveillance cameras and special emergency warning systems have been set up throughout the CBD. Special police powers of arrest have been granted. Along with the CBD fence, how much of this will be reversed, and when? The fence went up quickly, but will it come down as fast? I suppose it will, as businesses are already being seriously damaged throughout both the exclusion zone and the “declared zone” (an area where free passage is allowed, but where the police have more leeway in their actions than otherwise).

APEC is one of those events, like an Olympics, where the benefit to the city hosting it is highly touted by the government, but where that benefit will never accrue, offset as it is by the immediate costs. In this case, in addition, many businesses are actually suffering, due to necessary deliveries not taking place or because access by customers is prevented. Also, many delegates support staff have cancelled, so the “tourist” influx won’t have happened, hotel rooms will be empty that wouldn’t have been otherwise, restaurants won’t get their expected bookings, and so on. There will be no trade agreements signed, and any promised economic cooperation that does eventuate will take decades to show any benefit. It’s a farce, more about selling coal and uranium than anything else.

Resign or Be Prosecuted: How Quaint
Never forget that Alberto Gonzales is the man who drafted the legal opinion that authorized torture. He should never have been allowed to resign. He should have been impeached. I hope, however, that he managed to put some money aside for retirement: anyone who hires him will be revealing their own moral deficiencies in doing so.

Who Wrote These Questions?
In the sample 20 (of 200 possible) questions for prospective citizens, I’d do pretty well, but I truly wonder about the phrasing. Look at question 5, for example, “What is the floral emblem of Australia?” Floral emblem? You mean “national flower,” maybe? Who talks like that? Question 7 reads “In what city is the Parliament House of the Commonwealth Parliament located?” What pedant wrote that? Q17: “In Autralia, everyone is free to practice the religion of their choice, or practice no religion: true or false?” How does one practice no religion, watching football on t.v. instead of going to church? Maybe being able to parse the questions is part of the test.

Whose Sky Is It?
Sydney residents will be issued black-out glasses during APEC to ensure they cannot watch the fireworks display, exclusive to attending delegates.

Hosed
During APEC, in addition to a fence, nearly 3 meters high, surrounding parts of the CBD (and including some of the major tourist attractions of the city), police will be equipped with a water cannon and busses converted to serve as mobile detention centers. Security is a concern, naturally enough, and it’s important for the police to be prepared. It’s a little suspect, civil liberties-wise, that 200 beds are to be freed up in local jails by allowing some criminals home detention. This suggests the expectation of mass arrests beyond mere readiness, and the arguments in favor currently popping up on blogs always hark back to previous protests where “black hat” activists have turned up to derail otherwise peaceful protests. The presence of George Bush and the “globalization” agenda of the conference are nearly certain to ensure some disruption.

Those justifying such police-state interventions, however, are often the same self-styled libertarians decrying the “nanny state.” Of course, what they mean is only that they object to being taxed and seeing that money spent on poverty relief. The diminishment of civil rights is far more concerning to those less selfish.

Over the decades of my life, there has been an eruption of personal freedom, but also a concerted effort by reactionaries and power-seekers to reverse the trend. At the Munich Olympics, in 1972, global terrorism made itself most pointedly felt, and for some years, planes seemed to be hijacked quite regularly, yet we were never made to feel such fear so thoroughly as we are now being bullhorned into. Such measures as are being enacted in NSW serve to add to irrational anxiety, as well as to add one more and one more and one more cut to the thousand-cuts death democratic societies the world over seem to be suffering.

Christopher Hitchens had a piece in Slate not long ago, talking about “Rage Boy,” the iconic face of Islamic anti-Western protest. He makes a good point. “Rage Boy” doesn’t scare me, but he does scare others, a lot of others, and it’s become typical to respond to that fear by figuratively locking up the women and children and valuables, i.e., giving the police the power of indefinite detention, reducing the right of suspects to legal representation, authorise warrantless wiretapping without judicial review, and, as in Sydney, for September 7-10, removing the presumption of bail for anyone arrested in any police action around APEC.

This latter is not unlike what Bloomberg accomplished during the last Republican National Convention, and those cases are still clogging up the courts, as is likely to happen for any similar arrests here, two weeks from now.

It’s wrong to commit vandalism, and violence begets violence. McDonalds may be a symbol for some people of what’s wrong with capitalism, globalization, or the World Bank, if you can manage to stretch that far, but throwing a brick through the window of a franchise isn’t going to help you get your point across. Arresting 200 (or more) protestors, well, that does send a message: we’re in power; you’re not. Shouldn’t we be spreading freedom, instead of constantly trying to bury it? No wonder some many people in the Third World don’t trust our motives. We’re constantly betraying them.

Making Housing Affordable
The proposal to provide a tax deduction on first-home purchases isn’t bad, although Peter Costello thinks so. The problem with the Treasurer’s objection, however, is its short-sightedness. He claims that sales would be subject to capital gains as a result, but that isn’t necessarily so, since it’s entirely reasonable to impose a turnover time limit, whereby only sales occurring within the precluded period would be subject to taxation, and, like the tax deduction itself, apply the rule only to the primary residence.

I think there’s a lot more involved than tax deductions, but I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the idea.