Political Speech & Politics
I have a lot of trouble sometimes with Margo Kingston’s rhetoric, as she tends towards invective sometimes, and even the unquestioning acceptance of allegation as evidence, but now and then I get a snippet from one of her pieces that I find useful, like this quote from Robert Menzies, Prime Minister during World War II: “If the individual . . . neglects politics – except as a means of obtaining some selfish end – then the people will at times of crisis be dumb and impotent, and despotic rulers will make war.” This is as much an explanation of how fascist governments rose to power in Europe fifty years ago as it is of how America got into Iraq following September 11. Too few cared enough to vote in 2000 to make the difference the country needed, so in the country’s time of crisis, we went to war to suit the needs of a selfish man. Australia and the U.S. could use another Menzies.

Family Matters
Getting married entails taking on a whole new set of relations, a principle we are all aware of as a principle, but which we are not usually prepared for in practice, comparable, in a way, to taking the written exam for your permit vs. the road test for your license. This weekend, M. had volunteered us to drive the 10-year-old twin nephews, so we took them to Luna Park, sort of like taking your road test straight out onto the highway. We rode every ride, except the lame kiddie ones, and even turned over some of our cash to the carnies running the ring-toss type games (yes, the games are fixed; yes, I said so; yes, the kids wanted to try for the really, really huge stuffed toys but walked away satisfied with the meagre trash that looked like the broken off piece of something else that was bigger and maybe better but you’d never know because winning something worth the effort of beating a rigged game wasn’t on offer to begin with; we should have just handed them the coins and walked away, because then they wouldn’t have any reason to laugh, snickering behind their hands at the endless parade of suckers we joined – never mind, this aside is too bitter for the rest of the post, which is about how much fun we had: a lot). It’s been fifteen years or thereabouts since I was last at an amusement park, and that time I only rode about three rides before I was so nauseated I could do no more than turn green in response to any question put to me. It took longer this time, but my recovery was not complete for another 24 hours after. Surprisingly, it was a simple spinning ride rather than the high-in-the-air, upside-down ride that finished me, although I did come off the latter distinctly weakened from the experience, while having failed to enjoy seeing the harbour from the unique perspective offered thereby. The ferris wheel, I think, is forever more my ride of choice, although by that time, even the gentle swaying was a little much.

We followed our evening’s excursion the next morning with a trip to the movies. Originally planning to send the children home with traditional nightmares, we gave in to the boys’ peer-pressure-sourced pleadings and went to see The Day After Tomorrow, which didn’t include seeing Sydney destroyed, focussing instead, of course, on the northern hemisphere, so that all I could think was that at four stories, we might have ridden out the tsunami that floods NYC, and because we had a fireplace, we might even have made it through the ionospheric hurricane that initiates the flash-freeze of the world’s top half. Bad science, as the critics say? Sure. Clichéd disaster movie? Yes, you bet. Cringe-worthy, a lot of the time. The effects are good, though, for the most part, and the homeless man’s dog survives, and Dick Cheney becomes President but has a change of heart from evil to good (that’s the science fiction part), so it was entertaining at least, and the kids loved it. They also loved Holes, a much more complex movie, which we watched to wind down after Luna Park.

In for a penny, in for a pound, as the saying goes; so I expect it won’t be long before we entertain the boys again. I don’t mind. They were bright, energetic, nice to the cat, so they’re welcome any time.

Mistakes Were Made
I have sometimes made judgments based on wishful thinking, supposing that wrongful acts must be laid at the feet of the immediate perpetrators, and trusting that the system, the context in which such acts occurred, will be strong enough, reliable enough to address the situation accordingly. This impulse has not usually failed me, at least when applied within the context of the rule of law. The U.S. court system has almost always adjusted itself to ensure no illegitimate act, either by those who would abuse lawfulness or who would abuse law-making, would go uncorrected. I should have known, however, when the Supreme Court put Bush in office, that a self-correcting system should not have been the foremost recipient of my charity.

Yes, the courts still work properly; that’s not where I’m going with this. Instead, I have come to realize that I’ve lost of late a little of my previous focus when examining the conduct of the last four years. I went a bit out of my way in subscribing to the “bad apples” theory of the Abu Ghraib war crimes, and put all the blame on those worst elements that inevitably exist in the military, elements that in a different command climate may have been better controlled and perhaps eliminated. Yes, these people have done these acts, and they have done so of their own free will and in some cases to their own sadistic pleasure, but a truer sense of charity would – without excusing these personnel – lay the blame, the shame, at the feet of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the Cabinet, particularly Donald Rumsfield and his staff.

I cannot read Al Gore’s recent speech without cringing. He’s right, everything he says, although it’s far too late for him to stand up now, and I still have trouble forgiving him his robotic 2000 Presidential campaign. I should have known this was coming when we started shipping prisoners to countries where we knew they would be tortured and killed. I should have known when we put prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and denied them any status under law, calling them “enemy combatants” instead of prisoners of war. I should have known, and really I did, and I still offered the system and its architects more charity than I did the soldiers at the bottom of the abuse and of the chain of command. “The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush.” I remind myself everyday now: lay the blame where it belongs.

I recall a gag email going around immediately after the election, purporting to be from Queen Elizabeth II, saying, now that American democracy had failed, Britain would take us back. Here, in the context of Australia’s republic debate, I’ve often heard the argument that having a monarch protects against a descent into tyranny. Look at the French Revolution, what happened when they eliminated kings and the aristocracy. Look at the rise of Hitler in Germany’s post-Kaiser era. Perhaps it is too easy for a President to take power to himself so as to subvert the political processes he is meant to serve. But this is the error of the Supreme Court, in allowing Bush to come into the Presidency, and it is the failure of the Congress, perhaps especially the minor party, that they have not acted aggressively to stem his impulses. What America is this, where the powerful can sit above and sneer at what we all find so deeply repugnant, and do so without fear of any recourse the public might wish for?

Well, I’m happy, more than happy, to join Al Gore in demanding the resignations of Donald Rumsfield, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Stephen Cambone (these last 3 are not, I believe, appointees, but employees, and can even be fired), and Condoleezza Rice. (I don’t care so much about George Tenet’s resignation, but I do think Colin Powell should have stepped down a long time ago. His role as Secretary of State was emasculated long before he sat in front of the Security Council of the UN and claimed Bush’s lies as his own.) I’d also like to see the back of John Ashcroft, but I’ll settle – for now – to see Congress not renew the USA Patriot Act, the primary document that has allowed so many injustices to occur. And I’ve known since November 2000 where my vote would be cast this year.

Riverine
The Parramatta River is managed, much of its length channelled with concrete embankments, its stream controlled by overflow dams strategically placed across its breadth. It gets its share of wildlife, however, like the lone pelican who has been haunting the precinct of the Church Street bridge these last weeks, and joined now by a pair of native swans, of antipodean black, perhaps having followed us in their migration from Lake Burley Griffin? As large as the northern, white variety, and similar in mien, Australian swans are disconcerting creatures in respect to their call: a noise not unlike that of one of those squeezey toys, the kind that peeps out an artificial bleat. Such imposing birds, particularly this funereal variety, should have a more impressive honk, but then they’d be geese.

5 Second Cousins & a Dog
Now that Bill Gates has embraced it, weblogging is a more frequent topic in the news, but it leaves many of us facing the crushing reality that there’s no one out there reading this stuff. This puts us in mighty good company, as nobody out there reads much of anything these days, even though some terrific stuff is being written by very talented people indeed, even off-line. I admit to “blog fatigue” and to having experienced occasional instances of compulsion, but mostly this could all end tomorrow, and I wouldn’t particularly care about any of the lost content. Creative writing is separate.

Closing the Barn Door
Note to Italy: it’s too late. Pizza is whatever anybody wants to call pizza, so long as there’s a flat bread base with optional extras baked on top.

Manipulation
The White House continues its campaign of keeping the public off-balance, claiming the next 8 months constitute a serious threat period for terrorist attack. Really? More than the last eight months? Or the last year? Two years? The alarmist trend has been headed this way since Spain’s election, and they’re starting early because the Administration is in trouble in the polls. I’m sure Scott McCellan would indeed dismiss the claim that this is just the White House spinning public opinion through terrorism warnings, and I certainly don’t advise complacency. But the Bush government is characterized by lies, underhanded manipulation, and obfuscation, so their announcements get to be a little magical. If they warn us and it happens, they were right; but if they warn us and it doesn’t happen, they weren’t wrong, they were effective in prevention. Well, you could track the threat yourself if you’re really worried.

Addendum: Ashcroft says: Be Afraid; Ridge says: No Change. This has been happening since the Department of Homeland Security was established. Either Ashcroft has a press conference to tell us we need to be alert & Ridge follows to say the alert levels are unchanged, or it's the other way around; what doesn't change is the message. Sometimes, Ashcroft doesn't speak in counterpoint to Ridge, but only because Ridge is silent. Which one is mismanaging the message: both or neither?

URL Care
Force of habit as much as anything else has often led me to type "www." in front of the site name in the address box when I've gone to have a look at my own 'blog, but I've now come to the unfortunate discovery that more care is needed. This is me, and This is not. Actually the big difference is the use of blogpsot instead of the correct spelling, taking advantage of people typing too fast. So unless your a Bible-literalist, watch your URLs.

Lines Drawn
After the riot in Redfern this past February, a commission was put together to review the causes, as well as how the events were handled, so as to come up with a plan of action to address the conditions in the community overall. In the past few weeks, a number of minor officials have stepped forward to point their fingers: drugs, specifically heroin, is the root cause, and there wouldn’t be drugs, these pundits claim, except that a needle-exchange service operates there. This is beyond stupid. Needle exchange serves a vital role in reducing the spread of AIDS and other blood-borne communicable diseases, not just between the junkies, but even secondarily, since less infection means less exposure. There’s also a reduction in criminal enterprise, since fewer users are going to have problems getting kitted out. Drug injection rooms, like the one in Kings Cross, may increase the number of junkies and dealers in a defined area, but they also affect a decreased crime rate, at least because they become easier to monitor, and a lessened risk of disease exposure. These are good things. It’s true that junkies commit crimes, but they don’t tend to riot. They’re usually considerably less active than that, mostly because they can’t afford the exposure to law enforcement, but also because their using narcotics. Dealers aren’t inclined toward riot or even inciting others to riot either. They’re not going to raise their profiles for the police any more than their clients are, and they don’t care where they operate, because the junkies will always follow them. The problem is that in an underprivileged neighborhood, the residents are less likely to be invested in improving the overall conditions, less likely to be landlords (who, absent from the neighborhood, are already less concerned with raising property values) concerned with the character of their tenants, and this makes it easy for criminals to take up residence. Clover Moore looks to be on top of the situation more than anyone on Macquarie Street, and I’m more happy about her incumbency every time I hear from her.

New Content from Old
Since when are ‘bloggers Charles Dickens? Apparently since somebody named Kate Lee started signing them to book contracts. Sure, some of them are actual writers, but Bridget Jones’ Diary at least had a plot. Most ‘blogs are just opinion. The most telling part of Ms. Lee’s talent search: she’s sourcing graduates of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, i.e., people with talent and training and the ambition to be writers in the first place. Publishing. Go figure.

Everybody Say “Yea-a” . . . Say “Nay-ay”
Slate’s got a piece on how to increase the voter turnout this year, but while it’s pretty funny, it won’t work, unfortunately. I mean, I like the idea of handing out Happy Hour vouchers, but there’s a reason they used to shut bars the Tuesday following the first Monday of November, and you know those conditions would prevail somehow. And universities and churches have their tax-exempt status to take care of, so they’re reasonably wary about allowing the public airing of partisan political views, lest they be perceived as active sponsors. Nevertheless, we’re going to throw our hands in the air and Par-tay come the election here (whenever it’s announced; unlike the States, federal elections here, while occurring every three years, are held early or late according to the strategy of the party in power). It would be fun to do a U.S. party, too, but we don’t know enough Americans, first of all, and second, it would be a very late night indeed.

Preservation & Restoration
Nobody knows for sure exactly what the Amber Room looked like, but a replica has been finished after 25 years. I remember seeing the work underway at the American Museum of Natural History a few years ago with WCA, and they even had a couple of panels on display and some furnishings. Whatever happened to the original, whether burned, bombed, or deposited at the bottom of the sea in a submarine for eternal safekeeping, may never be known, but I’d be satisfied seeing the new one if they’ll tour it through here.

”The Feeling of What Happens”
The Sydney Biennale begins June 4, and like any good art biennale, its theme is stated in typically overblown rhetoric. Of course, because this is the “Year of the Built Environment,” the show is meant to incorporate architecture, so there are curlicues of phrasing to make a parallel to anatomy, so that our sense of self and sense of place are part of what the art in the show is meant to define . . . skip it. There are a number of gallery openings to coincide with the major venue exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of NSW, Artspace, Museum of Sydney, Royal Botanic Gardens (don’t get me started on the republicanism issue and name changes), and Opera House, as well as lectures and performances around and about. I never managed to attend even the Whitney’s biennale, so I ought to make a point of getting to at least some of this one, even though the point of these things is often for the artists to try to “push the boundaries” of art’s definition, an effort that most usually results in some truly awful junk. Since it runs through August, there’ll be time anyway, at least to see “the unknown artist.

Badges?
What bothers me about random ID checks on travellers is that I grew up in and have always lived in countries where you don’t have to carry “papers.” Now Boston is going to stop passengers trying to use local rail and subways for ID checks. In other words, no driver’s license, no train to work. Well, you say, but there are other forms of ID besides a driver’s license, aren’t there? No, there are not. You may be issued with an ID from your employer, but who the hell’s your employer? Unless it’s IBM or some other corporation instantly recognizable to 99% of police, it won’t pass muster, I guarantee it – I’ve had that problem for years. So it appears that now a State-issued form of National ID card is going to sneak in to your lives, but it’s just government intruding on your right of free association, your right to travel within the national borders without restriction, your right to privacy; it’s not going to keep you safe. It’s one thing to track foreign visitors entering the country (although why not just implant a chip?), but we’re getting pretty silly about security when we start sending daily commuters home because they don’t have a passport. Maybe if we all just had a Visa?

Yawn
According to Knacker Factor, I am going to start getting tired at about 2 p.m., peaking at about 3 p.m., after which I’ll get a little boost over the course of the rest of the afternoon, peaking between 6 and 8 p.m., after which I’ll start dropping off again. Knacker Factor uses the formula CDA + CT + KF = TMT, where CDA represents the time my circadian rhythm dips, CT is my “chronotype” (lark vs. owl in the test), KF is, of course, the knacker factor, and TMT is the “time most likely tired.” If I’ve got the math right, my CDA = 14:00, CT = “owl,” and TMT = 15:00, so 14 + owl + x = 15. I hate algebra, especially when it’s just silly. I do feel a little sleepy, though.

Your Antiterrorism Dollars at Work
Make that “on the way to” work. The NYC Transit division of the MTA wants to ban photography and videotaping on the subways and busses so that terrorists can’t conduct surveillance in planning their next attacks. (More surprising is the news that a ban previously existed 10 years ago.) I doubt the rule will go into effect unchallenged, although the other proposed rules – banning the use of end doors to move between cars on the subway, no feet up on the seats, no standing on skateboards - I expect will be enacted, keeping everyone safer, or anyway letting more people get a seat. Is this where Rummy got his latest bright idea?

You’re Only Encouraging Him
The insufferable Michael Moore’s Palme d’Or isn’t political? Look, he’s a one-trick cinematic rhetorician, whether he says it’s “art” or not. Oh, well, I wonder if he’ll direct the Salam Pax biopic next.

Ending Prisoner Abuse
Rummy found the solution to the Abu Ghraib scandal: ban camera phones. Sure, if they can’t photograph it, it won’t happen.

Festival::Festival
I joined M. in attending the final day of the Sydney Writers Festival, going to hear a group of Australian and German poets for a reprise of their activities from last year’s Berlin Poetry Project, where they’d translated and performed each other’s work in pairs. Luke Davies, whose novel Candy we both admire, was one of the participants, and we ended up going home with his latest collection of poems, Totem, which is also excellent. I could have done without the German, of course, English-only dullard that I am, but the counterpoint between the German poets’ content and that of the Australians was fascinating. The Germans were either hip or overly erudite for the most part, whereas the Australians were more generally expansive, less despairing even when the topics included poverty and degraded lives. It would be tremendously interesting to hear more such pairings, although the excuse of translation wouldn’t necessarily be available. Paris vs. Sydney, New York vs. Melbourne, Brisbane vs. Beijing. Perhaps Giramondo could be induced to sponsor a series?

Fresh vs. Frozen, Organic vs. Inorganic
I remember some years back listening to Wolfgang Puck testify before Congress that “fresh” is not “frozen.” I don’t think they got his point; maybe it was the accent. Anyway, now it appears that the FDA may allow pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones may be allowed in producing organic food. It shouldn’t be long before Monsanto has genetic modification o.k., too.

Peak Time
M. has related the theory to me regarding fashion that one tends to continue wearing the kinds of clothes, hairstyle, etc. that we did during the decade which we remember as being our best, unless we get wise, in which case we tend toward what was hip during that same period, although God help us if we mistake hip for trendy, in which case there’d be a lot of us out there looking like Huggy Bear, the pretend pimp from Starsky & Hutch. Nick Hornby adds music to the mix. Sure, I went through a period of time when listening to rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t working for me and graduated through country to blues to jazz, getting all growed up an’ such. It didn’t really take, however, and I listen to more rock now than I have over the previous ten years or so. It’s frustrating, however, because I still don’t listen to radio, and I can’t bring myself to trust what I read in the papers, not to mention I don’t have the bandwidth to be downloading MP3s, and this means I buy very little new, and even then it’s by the same musicians I’ve been buying for the last twenty years or more. (I did buy the new CD from Fountains of Wayne, but I haven’t even listened to it yet.) The newest things I’ve listened to and liked remain the Flaming Lips’ “Yoshmi vs. the Pink Robots” and “Unit” by Regurgitator, both of which do for me what Hornsby reports Marah does for him, although each in different ways. Of course, I enjoyed Big Black and Throbbing Gristle in their day, too, so although I’m listening to a lot more Lucinda Williams than I would have twenty years ago, I have growing up to thank for that. Perhaps I just haven’t hit my stride yet.

Society Gone Mad: Evidence Is Everywhere, if You Ride the Train
I don’t read the Australian much, but maybe I should, if Imre Salusinszky’s going to keep up his tales from CityRail. In NYC, I didn’t have the opportunity to experience quite so much cell phone activity, since the subways have yet to be wired for sound, and so didn’t know that “Hindi is a language that can only be shouted,” although I had previously observed and noted that cell phones must be analogous to those tin-can-and-string toys we’ve all played with, despite being equipped with a MICROPHONE. To add on to Clarence Street’s add-on, I have seen that it is universal that little old Chinese ladies are going to push past you to be the first one on board the train/bus/ferry, so you might as well just step aside now and avoid the damage to your bunions.

Meteor Defense
Based on the pattern of distribution, Sydney appears to be safer than western Australia, and probably even more than eastern North America. Good thing we moved, yeah?

New York’s Blamingest
When the Fire Department of New York decided that the New York Police Department’s claim as “New York’s Finest” was unfair, they called themselves “New York’s Bravest,” which produced a corresponding outcry from the cops, until everyone settled down and forgot they were fighting. Except when they arrived on the scene of some event calling for the presence of both, in which case the sniping and other childish behavior started right up again. Eventually the media got pretty tired of reporting this, and unless someone got hurt, they stopped, too. Of course, on September 11, 2001, the lack of coordinated communication cost lives on a much different scale, and the 9/11 Commission has highlighted this in its report, pointing fingers quite rightly also at the Giuliani administration for not addressing the problem. That was never going to happen, because Rudy got into office in the first place by playing with Police Union fire, but it’s pretty pathetic that Bloomberg has continued to allow this standoff to remain the status quo. The NY Times editorial today spares no feelings, even on up to Capitol Hill, where Congress and Tom Ridge just make things worse by doling out more money for emergency security aid to Wisconsin than to New York. (Which state was Dick Cheney supposed to be from? Oh, yeah.) If Mayor Mike can put in a total indoor smoking ban, he ought to be able to get the cops and firemen talking to one another properly. He won’t, but he should.

Let Slip the Dogs
No, don’t. In the city, dogs belong on leashes. In fact, they belong on leashes most places. Your dog is not a wild animal, and while he needs exercise, he also needs to be minded. Dog owners have a responsibility to the community in regard to cleaning up after their pets and keeping them from harassing or harming people and other animals, but also in regard to their dogs themselves. Your dog does not want to be hit by a car, does not want to get into a fight, does not want to get lost, picked up and taken to the pound and subsequently destroyed because you were too stupid to use a leash and did little more afterward than put up flyers in the immediate area where you irresponsibly lost him or her. Dogs are working animals, not playthings to be discarded when you get bored, but if you insist on having a pet, and your pet needs to go running, run with your dog. On a leash.

Putting Paid to the City
Electricity water rate rises and additional charges for busses and trains is all Bob Carr appears to have come up with to fund Sydney’s projected growth and infrastructure development needs. And he says this is “distinctive.” No, it’s the easy way. Sure you’re planning where to get the money at the same time as you’re planning the development, but that’s no surprise; that’s what you’re supposed to do. But charging more for utilities and putting the burden on the users of mass transit options is going to do two things more than pay for the roads and tunnels you’re building: get the entire population offside over heat, light, and water; and drive everyone with the option off the trains and busses and into cars to clog those new roadways and pollute the air further just when it’s needed least. Water restrictions are good; I’m all for it. But look, I know it’s hard to plan where commerce will locate itself and so it’s hard to know where to put the train station and bus depot when you’re plotting out where to put new suburbs, but you’ve got underserved suburban centers already and a rail system that’s in tatters. Instead of ring roads, tunnels, and tollways, get your mass transit ducks in a row first. That’s going to do more for the environment than anything you’ve got up your sleeves presently, especially with that idiot Michael Costas running the Transport Ministry show. Not that anybody’s going to listen to me: I ride the train.

It's the What? Forbes Gives Me an Emily Litella Moment
Naturally, George II would nominate Alan Greenspan to chair the Fed again, because it's about the economy, right? Yeah, anyway. Couldn't an editor over at Forbes have come up with a better headline than this: "Senate panel aims for June Greenspan hearing-aide." Look, if we're worried he can't hear well enough to make good decisions on interest rates, couldn't we get him fitted out before June? And isn't that spelled "hearing aid"? Never mind.

Abraham’s Math
“And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:23-25)

And so it goes, five at a time, down to ten, and even for those ten, God would spare the sinners. Of course, we’re talking Sodom and Gomorrah here, and we know what happens after that. Anyway, what was George W. Bush’s math? Did he reckon the consequences of war in Iraq? Or, as in Paul Savoy’s article, ”The Moral Case Against the Iraq War”, was the formula used like that of Raskolnikov? I don’t buy all of Savoy’s argument, notably in excusing Palestinian suicide murderers as freedom fighters (any more than I did when Reagan said the same about the Contras), and I doubt the political will exists to truly force a public reckoning by the Presidential candidates on the moral use of force, but overall, well, there aren’t enough in the White House to spare the Bush administration from destruction in November, or sooner, if only Congress had the will to call these people to account.

The Progress of Winter
Although it is worrisome that there is not very much rain, it's hard to feel gloomy when the sun is out and the afternoons are warm and the pelicans are sailing up and down the Parramatta river. Last year, walking through Centennial Park, I was surprised to see white swans in the ornamental ponds, as I had by then learned that black is the native colour of those birds here. We did see black swans in Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra, or I did anyway, which was gratifying. Black or white, however, swans don't for me exhibit the same quality afloat as pelicans. Their pouched bills may make them figures for caricature, but as they proceed along, trolling for fishes (or eels, perhaps) to consume, they remind me of stately sailing vessels. Maybe it's Hans Christian Anderson's fault, but swans are more yachtish, the kind piloted by snobs too effete to hoist canvas themselves.

Flaws in the Ointment
I've composed a 1000-word essay in response to a question regarding my interpretation of the conduct of the Abu Ghraib prison guards and interrogators, but I don't know that it's really worthwhile posting it. I don't want to insult the American military, for whom I generally have an admiring opinion of their skills and dedication, and despite recent events, or because of them, I know that the U.S. is going to be in Iraq long after the June 30 "hand-over." Anything I say regarding the matter can only be addressed by long-term solutions, although, yes, sure, short-term handling is certainly called for. I'll put it up here anyway, but it's pretty much irrelevant, so you're more than welcome to ignore it.

Alienation and Nation-Building
It’s true, as has been pointed out in the comments regarding an aside in a previous post, that I have known a number of people in the military, including one near immediate family member, an in-law of an immediate family member, some work peers and others, and none of them can in any regard be considered sociopathic, but that’s rather beside the point, at least statistically. I have known in addition to the aforementioned, people who joined up in part or wholly for the benefits: meals, housing, uniforms, child care, education, supplemental income: to rise above their immediate circumstances. I’ve seen enough of this to identify it as a common feature of the volunteer armed forces. I don’t dispute that there are a large number of serving individuals who are pursuing a full career in the military, with expectations similar to that of any office job, including advancement in status and pay, but they are mostly going to be the product of the Academies and many are more likely to do their 20 years and move on. These individuals, in addition to their military training, will have received a more thorough and well-rounded education than many of their fellows in uniform. Of the officers I’ve known, in addition to Academy graduates, the majority have been individuals who served during wartime and left immediately upon discharge. I see career military personnel, then, as the least likely members of the armed services to commit atrocities.

The bulk of the military are not officers and are not careerists, however, they are NCOs and below who are serving because it is the quickest, in some ways easiest way out of poverty or an abusive situation they can aspire to. Such a background is going to produce psychologically damaged individuals who military training is not designed to root out, but must still address to achieve effectiveness, but also who are specifically targeted by most recruiting drives and advertising. Rather than eliminate sociopaths, I would argue that military discipline layers control over personalities by breaking down individualism and building up group loyalty, but this does not re-engineer the previously ingrained personality problems some individuals will bring with them into military service. In some cases, training also enhances aspects of character that outside the military would be flaws, rewarding expertise in weapons and combat methodologies by the same rebuilding of personality techniques used to create organizational loyalty. These individuals are taught therefore to value the military as their family, and their own abilities as key contributing factors towards the success of that organization. They are taught that they are different from and better than those who are not part of the Army or Marine Corps or Navy or Air Force. Within these branches, special groupings are devised to further enhance the sense of elitism and entitlement membership in the military confers. Non-military are undisciplined, self-indulgent, untrustworthy. Elite status confers authority. The higher up in the chain of command, the more authority you command. But even down to the lowest ranking soldier, some degree of authority is afforded. The psychology of many is suspect, so when they exercise authority, they cannot be trusted. This isn’t the Stanford experiment, and William Saletan’s article in Slate.com points out the differences, but also shows the influence military culture has on the events in Iraq. For my part, in respect to my thesis, I don’t believe the Abu Ghraib torturers are soldiers programmed by the military to reject authority or act out sociopathic tendencies, neither do I believe soliders generally are so trained. I think the troops committing war crimes in Iraq actually crave authority; in fact desire to be empowered to mete out discipline by accepting the authority of those ranked above them, but which they then to pass on the way abused children are programmed to commit child abuse because they have started out psychologically damaged, and such troops comprise a significant enough number of the military overall that the Abu Ghraib events were inevitable.

Military discipline is meant to restrain this, but doesn’t, at least not in every case. There are always a few who will take “souvenirs” or beat or shoot prisoners, and some of them will get away with it and some will be caught and punished. But in this case, right now, we have added to the problem by three nearly concurrent factors, beyond even the failure of the military’s decline from forming cohesiveness to small, alienated elitist groups as a result of its increasing dependence on volunteers who are largely sourced from increasingly alienated segments of the general population to maintain basic staffing levels. First, the Bush government under Donald Rumsfield has pursued the reorganization of the military according to principles alienating to the career officers, among them the increased reliance on increasingly complex technology well underway in the 1970s and ‘80s, and this has been exacerbated by the lead-on inevitable alienation of the soldiers who rely on those officers and command structures, causing a breakdown in the operational norms affording them or otherwise imposing necessary self-control. Second, the troops in Iraq are simultaneously engaged in war and peace; fighting daily battles even while engaged in rebuilding Iraq alongside non-military contractors, so the mission of the military is confused from the outset. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the Bush government is enacting revenge fantasies. We are there to punish, and as often happens to begin with, the actions taken in response to orders have exceeded the orders themselves.

Until the evidence came to light – and there’s an argument to be made that it existed in the first place because of the same kind of perverted sensibilities present in the rank-and-file military that gave rise to the abuse in the first place – it was done with the tacit approval of the chain of command. Our military personnel in Iraq have been instructed that they cannot distinguish between civilians and combatants: all are potentially terrorists, members of Al Qaeda or Saddam loyalists. There’s a great deal of truth in this, but military discipline and procedure is meant to have processes to contend with the problem. Still, the enemy are not uniformed soldiers, so they are not to be afforded the same rights as soldiers. As a result, violent fantasies get played out, indulged, and the now equally alienated careerists turn their eyes away until they can no longer do so. They’ll have to clean up the mess, but they couldn’t have prevented it, not wholly, although it might have been mitigated somewhat, if they hadn’t let the leash slip.

Foreign Correspondence
I've added Foreign Substance in the links section to the right. Located via Lost in Transit, this is another, new group 'blog of foreigners recording their global perspectives and experiences. Because there seems to be a significant Asian presence, it seems particularly worthwhile to me to track the content here, now that I live in that half of the world.

Lets the Sunshine in
I used to think good beer tasted bad. The way Heineken tasted, that is. But then I learned that exposure to light could make beer go “off” and that it would smell and taste skunky. Why does this happen? Because of clear or green glass bottles. Heineken in kegs doesn’t taste the way it often does in bottles. As a result, I don’t buy beer in anything but brown glass, and I’m pretty much off Heineken even on tap. Not that I was going to be of much help in their push to double their Australian sales anyway. There’s enough local product of superior flavor to begin with to keep me happy.

Fraud
We’ve grown a little paranoid over the last couple of years, at least in regard to the use of credit cards and the internet, having had our number lifted once off a retailer’s database and having our savings account raided once by a bank employee who redirected an ATM card and PIN to himself or a confederate. Luckily we’ve always detected the fraud early on in the piece, so we haven’t experienced any actual damages in the long run. Nevertheless, we remain reluctant to buy on-line even from trusted retailers, because they’re not the ones we have to worry about per se. But credit card sales on the internet are huge, so the card vendors have a new gimmick to help us indulge our mail-order tastes: fake numbers. It’s no big surprise to me that MBNA is offering this, or Citibank for that matter, since these are two of the biggest credit card vendors out there. It also seems like a really good idea, even if it does add a step or two in executing the transaction. There must be rules in place somewhere in their service agreement with banks offering cards and retailers accepting them that prevent Visa and MasterCard themselves from offering the service, although it would potentially increase their revenue stream if they could charge consumers a small fee. Even though American Express isn’t offering their customers temporary numbers anymore, I’d guess MBNA and Citibank (and eventually others) will continue to do so.

Nothin’ But a Good Man Feelin’ Bad
Although the ABC and SBS broadcast some PBS productions, its usually long after they’ve played in the U.S. For Martin Scorsese’s Blues, it will probably be a bit longer, as they’re getting a theatrical release here first (for 6, anyway, Clint Eastwood having denied permission for his to play in theatres). M. & I have been to see two of them over the weekend, Scorsese’s Feel Like Going Home and Wim Wenders’ Soul of a Man. We’ll make a priority of going to Red White and Blues, Mike Figgis’ entry, but will probably wait for the others on video or broadcast, mostly because this is prime movie season for us, what with all the U.S. summer blockbuster releases getting worldwide play (yea! Spideman vs. Doctor Octopus) and the Sydney Film Festival, which will include, again, for us, waiting for some to come out in general release (this one’s my pick: Zatoichi, with Takeshi Kitano).

Of the two Blues films, I prefer Scorsese’s, although so far I’ve been left with strangely mixed feelings coming out from both: I want more detail or more music. The films as documentaries don’t have the seamlessness of, for example, Ken Burns’ Jazz production, nor do they have the musicality of, say, Standing in the Shadows of Motown. When they start down the documentary path, they swerve suddenly into the music, and just when you’re starting to groove on the tunes, they track back into a story, and usually without affording the kind of narrative segue you’d expect. M.’s take on Wenders’ entry was apropos of both, I think, that the narratives skipped over necessary points of connection that would have made sense of the information being presented. Corey Harris, in Feel Like Going Home goes from the Delta to the hills of Mississippi to Africa, and while you come away knowing why you miss a little of the how. Wenders moves from Blind Willie Johnson to Skip James to J. B. Lenoir but never connects the three except by having Lawrence Fishburn speak in Johnson’s voice as the narrator and telling us that James and Lenoir died within three years of each other. Nevertheless, I have to recommend these films, because they document a musical form that gets all too easily lost in rock ‘n’ roll and country music. And like Willie Dixon said, “the blues are the roots, everything else is the fruits.”

Clamshell Ashtrays
The idea of banning smoking on the beach is a positive step in many respects: no more butts stubbed out in the sand, no more wafting clouds of smoke spoiling the lovely sea breezes. Sure, when I smoked, I did so on the beach just as much as anywhere else, although at a certain point I was adult enough to pick up after myself. But even when I was a kid, the beaches were cluttered with the stub ends of filtered cigarettes, and these make up a noticeable portion of the plastic waste washed up along shorelines worldwide. I heartily approve Manly Council’s action, and wonder if Clover Moore will do the same for the Harbour beaches, or if the Councils for the Eastern suburbs will follow suit?

Update: The ban has been passed. What makes this possible is that Australian society remains by-and-large tremendously polite, so its citizens tend to be law-abiding almost to a fault. For example, Walk-Don't Walk signs are actually obeyed, regardless of traffic conditions. So if NYC's Mayor Bloomberg can achieve an 11% drop in the number of smokers by his total indoor ban, perhaps Manly will, in this culture, achieve its goals, too.

Thought Crimes Against the Self
Over at The Morning News, Oliver Griswold ”tests his die-hard liberal beliefs” with a diet of all right-wing media, and survives. It’s an amusing essay, without being particularly disputatious, and I doubt I’d have the stamina to try anything similar.

Because We Let Them
I have to remind myself that Margo Kingston isn’t talking about me or even about the majority of my compatriots when “the Americans” are condemned for the war crimes taking place in Iraq, but rather about my country’s present government and the military and its subcontractors who are actually perpetrating such acts, most probably with at least the tacit approval of the Secretary of Defense. I have to remind myself that the point of her 9 May article is in its headline: ”Howard’s Weakness, Our Danger”. The final paragraph is worth reading alone:

“You know how they get away with it? Because we, the people, let them. In the end, Bush, Blair and Howard invaded Iraq because our democracies were not strong enough to stop them. Blame politicians, blame the media and blame ourselves. The question for all of us, after we purge Australia of this weak, amoral excuse for a leader, is to work out how we can ensure we never let any "leader" do this to us again.”

Yes, that’s right, we only have ourselves to blame. Because in America only a tiny fraction bothers to vote, let alone run for office, because we’ve let running for office become such a burden that only the smallest number of good, thoughtful people can afford the time and expense to rise high enough in the system to get a shot, while a larger number of greedy climbers intent on achieving power either to fulfill a bloated egotism or line their pockets do the same but through patronage and pork-barrelling, and we let that continue. In America we continue the myth that every child can be President, that everything is possible for everybody if they just work hard enough, and that just isn’t so. We continue this myth and turn a blind eye to the social ills that fill our military with the desperate and the deranged and fill our jails with the same, unless they end up in homeless shelters. Because we let all that happen, we can only blame ourselves that George W. Bush is President and has filled his Cabinet with demagogues and pursued his megalomaniacal path to war.

What happened to Great Britain, to Tony Blair? Last I saw he was their Clinton, but with the ascension of Bush II he has grown to resemble nothing so much as a lapdog, one with the sagging physiognomy of a particularly beleaguered bloodhound, too. Are the pictures lies, and can Blair survive following America into this war? He, too, has an electorate that cares little for its responsibility and pursues an isolationist relativism toward its neighbors, exemplified by the inane opposition it mounted to the Chunnel before it opened and its continued reluctance to participate in even Europe’s monetary unification.

And what of Australia? Here the vote is compulsory, yet even after the Patricks scandal and the Tampa John Howard’s government has now run the country for nine years. He’s the Teflon PM it seems, unless this year proves his annus horribilis, as it has for the Iraqis. (Perhaps by claiming for his government the status of “underdog” as he did this week, he’s gone too early into trying for the sympathy of the Aussie battlers, but only time will tell – with the latest poll numbers coming out in opposition to the budget, maybe he’ll deserve the identification.) How does a nation re-elect the Liberals who gutted their social welfare system, who lied and still lie, who dragged their country into an unpopular war despite mass rallies and protests? How can this happen with compulsory voting? Easy: just because you have to vote doesn’t mean you have to think about what you’re doing. It’s easy to pick up a ballot and “vote 1.” Easier than using the preferences system to your advantage instead of letting the politicians manipulate it to their own. And they’re the same, the Australian politicians, as they are in America, the same hoards of climbers and graspers (and, yes, the same principled individuals few in number).

Here, there, the vote is coming, and we have the advantage a lot of other countries don’t. We can have a revolution without resorting to violence; we can vote out the unprincipled, the lazy, the ineffective, the ones without the long-term vision and the stamina to pursue a course of action more befitting the advance of civilization we want. Other countries claim “democratic” status for themselves but suspend their constitutions while a military dictatorship or propped-up feudal tyranny turns its constituency upside down and shakes out its pockets. Get rid of Bush, get rid of Howard. If America is going to be the sole superpower, it needs to use its power for good, not greed. If Australia is going to be a leading democratic power, its got to do so with a good hard look at where it sits in the world. Tony Blair should be lining up a replacement, too; one who can put that nation back on track after the damage Blair’s done by following Bush instead of influencing him, as he’d said he could.

And How’s the Family?
We caught the tail end of the 7:30 Report on ABC Thursday night for a little Q&A with Mark Latham following his response to Peter Costello’s budget plan announcement. I have to admit I was somewhat underwhelmed, but if we’d managed to watch the response itself, perhaps I’d have felt differently. (The best bit of the program was the satire at the end, with John Clarke playing Costello and interjecting the word “family” for every other noun.) Mr. Latham continues to tubthump in these situations, this time over the plight of citizens at the lower end of the economic spectrum, those earning $1000 per week or less, who are not getting anything out of the Liberals’ budget cuts (unless they crank out more children – in response to the government’s tiresome ploy of playing up their commitment to “family values,” apparently consisting entirely of keeping mothers at home to care for their ever-growing gigantic broods – in which case they’re going to get plenty in lump sum payments, not that their expenses won’t increase along with their population, a worse than zero-sum game indicative of the party-in-power’s social irresponsibility for the state of the nation beyond the next 3 years), and while I’m not unsympathetic, I’m glad of the bracket-creep adjustment I’ll get out of this just the same. The real problem with Labour’s response is that it’s not particularly substantive, which is terribly frustrating during this lead-up period to the next election – August or September or October or November, nobody knows, but at least no later than that – albeit understandable, since Labour doesn’t want to play their hand too soon. (Sometimes I think I’d sell my vote, too, if I had one.) Fine. As much as I appreciate the concept of “getting it right in the first place,” its hard to see the trees for the forest getting thrown up in our faces. It’s been interesting since December to watch Labour pull off Clintonesque moments, stealing a march on fiscally responsible (and socially progressive) ploys the Liberals ought to have accomplished months before, such as the superannuation reform they forced down the government’s throat. But now we’re in a waiting game, waiting for the Liberals to call the election so campaigning can begin in earnest. This ought to happen any minute now, unless they’re waiting for the post June 30 pregnancies to go into their second trimester.

Website Mirroring. With Cats
The Infinite Cat Project begins here. I wonder if this Abby will be joined by that Abbie? (And what is it about the internet that prompts so many people to do cute pictures of their pets? Is this what Western culture has come to?)

Working Without a ‘net
Jock ‘blogging? Too bad there aren’t any pro athletes mentioned here I’m particularly interested in hearing from. The Barry Bonds site isn’t even a weblog, just a place for him to get paid directly by the public for trash. A number of the other sites mentioned don’t much resemble ‘blogs either, so I’m not sure what Slate.com is on about. Doesn’t anybody there know how to play this game? O.k., Mark Cuban, maybe, but by-and-large my guess is most of these guys should stick to the “as told to” format.

Ars Gratia Artis
When is a painting not a painting? When it’s a charcoal drawing that wins the Archibald prize, of course. The Archibald is an annual controversy for one reason or another (and over at The Art Life you can find a write-up over an earlier expression of dissatisfaction on the winning portrait, as well as current commentary), but this may be putting too fine a point on it. Mr. Gulpilil is a fine actor – the world at large most likely has him in mind when “Aborigine” is brought up – and a worthy figure for portraiture, no doubt, and the work itself is excellent, so does it have to be painted? Does that require the use of a brush, or is that just technique? If the rules say “oil, acrylic, watercolour, [or] mixed media” does that mean that tempera is out unless you affix a bit of cloth or wood to the canvas as well? If art is supposed to enhance our lives, why do so many people get so upset about so much of it for so many different reasons?

Top o’ the Pops
I’ve never heard Roxy Music’s “Song for Europe” and don’t think it was actually a Eurovision entry, but I think now is a good time to find a copy of Stranded to relieve my mind.

More Oil
Back when the Portuguese pulled out of Timor and Indonesia stepped in to usurp their independence, the Australian government ultimately responded by negotiating sea borders with the Indonesians under United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which proved quite favorable, providing itself with significant undersea oil reserves. Now that Timor is out from under the Indonesian thumb, they’d like their oil back, but naturally John Howard and Alexander Downer aren’t having a bar of it. They don’t have to, either, because in 2002, Australia withdrew from the UNCLOS treaty. An interim agreement yet to be ratified would give Timor 90% of some seabed oil fields but only 20% of Greater Sunrise, the main field, leaving the rest to Australia. Royalties are estimated at around US$10 billion over the next 30 years. Since Timor has an annual budget of about US$79 million, the extra money would surely go a long way and, post-independence is desperately needed. Not that Australia couldn’t use every billion it can get its hands on, but fair’s fair and somebody’s not playing a straight wicket on this one. Recommended reading for those interested includes: James Ensor in Online Opinion and ABC Online News, but I’m sure there’s something out there in favor of screwing the Timorese out of their oil if your partisanship sails another way.

Progress Report
Sanctioning Syria for supporting terrorism is a long overdue step but nearly inexplicable given the current state of affairs in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the administration has up until recently very effectively distanced itself from the day-to-day actions against the population there by subcontracting the war, in the end their ethical chickens have come home to roost. Bush II opted out of the International Criminal Court, which now appears to have been a prescient step. Perhaps it was part of the pre-September 11 invasion planning in the first place. In whose interest was the overthrow of Saddam Hussein? Oil prices are rising, probably in part because the U.S. is too busy trying and failing to establish order to get the production infrastructure running properly (not to mention that the insurgents are performing some effective acts of sabotage). The Rummy and the Dummy have screwed up, but they’re unlikely to ever have to pay for what they’ve done.

Sociological Aside 1: If we keep in mind that our military has been increasingly marginalized from the rest of American society over the last 30 years and that it has been for at least that long a hidden form of welfare and thus a refuge for already marginalized segments of the population, we can begin to see the root of the Abu Ghraib torture. Our society needs serious attention, and the evidence is the numbers of armed forces members who are people having joined up because their lives would otherwise have taken them to prison as criminals.

Sociological Aside 2: Meanwhile, the insurgency increases its barbarism, throwing off any pretence of civilization prior to the Bronze Age.

Commencement Speeches I’d Like to Hear
Laurie Anderson was the speaker at Cooper Union’s commencement last year. I wonder if she brought her midi with her and did the male voice? “O Superman, O Graduating Students, O Moms and Dads. . .” Beats the speaker at Villanova this year, although also an entertainer.

Jitters
I’ve been doing it all wrong: smaller quantities in more frequent doses is preferred over that one or two large flat whites first thing in the morning. Of course, a cup of coffee after about 3 p.m. is going to keep me up late enough to watch question time or even some U.S. programming, but that’s not a circadian cycle I want to get into.

No Saturday Delivery
Australia Post workers are going on strike, but scabs will be brought in to keep operations normal. Except there’s no mention of household mail deliveries. There are a couple of things that bother me about this: Australia Post is a government franchise, so bringing in non-union workers, a disreputable business practice in the private sector, seems doubly wrong when the government does it. The focus on Express Mail services appears to favor business over the public, which I would posit stems from the same point of view regarding the practices and goals of Australia Post that lead management to hire scabs, i.e., profit over people. Post offices are globally famous as unpleasant places to work, and although that has at its root as much the career laziness engendered by civil service-sinecure regulations such organizations have been fighting for a hundred years as it does that the work is brain-numbingly dull, my idea of reform doesn’t start with how many workers I can displace, but rather with what processes can be altered to improve workplace culture and worker productivity. The outsourcing trend has benefits in profitability, and rostering the workforce into shorter time on the line will also assist in that goal, but more people working fewer hours for more competing employers doesn’t necessarily translate into greater proletarian spending power, does it? Email isn’t necessarily cheaper than a first-class stamp when you take your ISP subscription into account, etc., but will everything else available on-line, it won’t be long before they start turning post offices into internet cafes at this rate, and we’ll all have plenty of time to spend there we’d have otherwise wasted standing in queues waiting for the next clerk to stop counting the register tray contents so we can buy a stamp.

Gone Bush
(N.b., that’s not George, but rather an Australian term for heading out into the countryside.)
We’ve just gotten back from Canberra, Australia’s “bush capital.” Canberra is one of two planned cities built as national capitals, but the only one that can be called successful. (Brasilia turned out to be too spooky for even the civil servants to adjust to by all accounts.) We went down after some careful planning and consultation with friends resident there with two specific purposes beyond socializing with our friends: see the autumn colors and visit the National Gallery’s aboriginal art collection. We were thwarted only in the latter goal, as the NGA had that part of the museum closed for renovations. Strange that they should block off such a significant part of the gallery in the height of tourist season, but there you have it. Instead, we ended up at a private gallery, where canvasses were rolled out upon the floor for our perusal. Purchase, too, in the end, which we’re both rather pleased with, even if it will be many years before there’s any thought of investment value. I just like the pictures.

The train ride to the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) is terrific, at least once you get past Campbelltown (an hour or so from Central), increasingly bushy, so that about two hours out of Canberra you’re seeing more kangaroos than cows. The train station is on the outskirts of town, about the same distance out as the airport, but saying that is deceptive, as the outskirts are almost immediately integrated into the suburbs. Kingston and Manuka were recommended as the lively districts, with fine dining and a bit of nightlife, and while the restaurants were indeed good in Kingston, they were also all located around a single city block, albeit quite a large one, still, just a stripmall, essentially. All the streets are lined with trees, and as a result of Griffin’s plan, bright with color, because the trees are foreign, deciduous varieties on the whole, with a scattering of eucalypts through some areas to maintain the natural greenery. It’s hard to say what summer and winter would be like there, but autumn is beautiful, if a little cold at night. Once in town, you travel in and out of individual city centers, each planned district having its own character, with arterial roads leading into the government district where Parliament and the various other national buildings are located along the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. I thought the walk around the lake – quite long, and I only managed a small portion thereof – lovely, and I appreciated the civic edict disallowing development along the shoreline. That’s fallen by the wayside, at least at the far end of the lake, but so long as there are no highrises and development reaches no further than the treeline, it ought not to detract from the overall prettiness.

One of our friends works in the Senate and took us on an insider’s tour of Parliament House, the grounds of which are surrounded by temporary security barriers. This is unfortunate for two reasons. First, they’re ugly. Second, Parliament House is mostly underground, the idea being that the Australian people should be able to walk upon the top of the government, symbolically demonstrating that the ministers and so worth work for them. It’s a nice thought, now spoiled somewhat. Nevertheless, the building is terrific. Like an iceberg, the majority of the building is well below the areas accessible to the public, and we learned that it’s rather labyrinthine and requires the use of golf carts for staff to get around. We skipped that part of the tour, not having brought any thread or breadcrumbs. We visited John Howard’s office (but didn’t have our spraypaint with us) and Mark Latham’s, but most of the building was inactive, with the exception of Peter Costello’s, in preparation for this week’s finalization and presentation of the budget. The principle feeling I had leaving the seat of government was a desire to pay a lot closer attention to what gets reported on the media, both stylistically and in content, primarily from a greater sense of how things work. Our friend Simon T. gave us a much better grounding in what goes on than we’d previously been able to obtain for ourselves.

Old Parliament House, where the National Portrait Gallery is housed, the National Archives, a few other civic buildings (at least from the outside), dining and excellent conversation with intellectual and informed and enjoyable persons all added up to a terrifically worthwhile trip that I would make a pilgrimage. There’s yet more to visit and learn, and I recommend it to anyone seeking a sense of Australia, particularly its national history and political inner life.

Notoriety
I made the Blogjam. That’s pretty cool.

Late Addendum: Belated thanks to Jozef for providing Blogjam6's SMH Web Diarist, David Tiley, with the referral.

Catch-Up
(N.b., the title is not a reference to catsup or ketchup, known in Australia as “tomato sauce,” but rather to the fact that I’ve been out of the loop pretty much, otherwise occupied with lying around reading and slacking off work, the methodology for which I’ve established as looking vaguely pained and holding my lower abdomen as I arise from my reclining position on the couch, perhaps prefaced by gently removing the cat from my lap, whose weight should have been uncomfortable if there was actually anything wrong with me . . . but I digress.)
As a member of Democrats Abroad – Australia, in addition to a wealth of email touting the latest activities of the committee, sometimes there’s a bit of levity to be had, e.g., Internet Registration for the Draft. Thanks to Scott. More seriously in politics, another of the members has forwarded the URL for the Tell an American to Vote website, an informal resource to assist Democrats abroad in dealing with absentee balloting. The telling statistic of 7 million expatriates against Bush’s 2000 margin of 537 votes is worth noting. Even though the majority of those millions may be military, they aren’t all Republicans.

Clean, White Sheets
Just a few remarks on the state of the hospitals, before I leave off recuperation and forget this whole vestigial organ thing ever happened, not that I'll be able to until all the hair grows back, but anyway. St. Vincent's hospital is the big cheese public medical center here, getting in most of the trauma cases as well as your various dregs of society, but there weren't so many of those in evidence when we turned up a week ago this past Thursday to complain of abdominal distress. We were processed as quickly as anyone else ever is who goes to hospital via the emergency room without having turned up in an ambulance and treated kindly, efficiently, professionally by the doctors and such with whom we had contact. Not that I remember a single name or can even recall ever knowing whether any one or more of them were actually doctors. It's a little tricky because there are supervisory personnel called "registers" or "registrars" (I may have to do some research someday to discover the spelling and correct terminology), which is enough like "residents" that I have no idea what they do anyway, and I didn't get to see any even though I kept hearing about them. I think they're the top doctors on shift at any one time, with the residents and otherwise learning staff working under them. It's all beside the point, though, since really all I can mention is that the nurses (called "sisters," as in nursing sisters, I guess back from the day when hospitals were often run and staffed by religious orders) and doctors weren't just the breeze in, flip through your chart, spout some jargon and run types. They'd spend time and talk to you a bit, took an interest in you personally as well as professionally, and answered questions. They were all a bit taken aback that I was attempting to finish a Patrick White novel following my operation, but I wasn't trying too hard, as it was days before I had any real concentration back. The wards were spotless and efficiently run. Each bed had its own t.v. hung above it, which could be great so long as everyone was watching the same thing, otherwise you could end up a little taken aback by some things you thought you heard coming from the mouth of Homer Simpson: what was that he said about John Howard? Nevermind. I do think I should have said something about the accumulation of dust on the top of the telly, but it seemed crass when otherwise everything was so spotless. In any event, a week after my operation, I'm up and itchy, with no hangover from the drugs, and no pain to speak of. Since I never have to worry about my appendix again, this seems a great time to get some land out in the Blue Mountains and stock a fallout shelter, or take a job in the Antarctic, except survivalism is so passe.