”Please Use the Word ‘Girt’ in a Sentence”
When I was interviewed for my citizenship application, I was helpfully provided with a copy of the list of Responsibilities and Privileges with which becoming an Australian would endow me, things like Registering to Vote and Running for Office, just to refresh my memory, since I was expected to have learned them all off by heart prior to coming in. At the interview itself, I was required to recite two from each section. (Naturally, one of the privileges I provided was the trickiest to articulate without sounding like some kind of Bali drug smuggler: If I get in trouble overseas, I have the privilege to call for diplomatic assistance – what was I thinking?) I passed anyway. Because I’m a native English speaker, I probably wouldn’t have any trouble with the rest of Andrew Robb’s citizenship test, although the spelling variations do still catch me up sometimes, despite all the English English literature I’ve read, as well as some of what I perceive to be archaic usages still in force here, mostly prepositional. I am not convinced, however, by Mr. Robb’s assertions regarding the use and purpose of the test he’s proposing.

He says it’s for “prospective migrants,” which means it isn’t a citizenship test per se at all: it’s an immigration filter. Prospective migrants who want to become citizens will indeed want to attain a level of conversational English language skills to ease their transition, if they haven’t already, while prospective migrants who don’t want citizenship or aren’t sure before they get here and have a chance to learn something about Australia other than that it’s a safe, free country, may not be so concerned for themselves, much as immigrants to America were more focussed on having their children succeed in the land of opportunity. So when Mr. Robb goes on to address the issue in the specific context of “young Australian Muslims,” his real agenda is indeed revealed, as Ameer Ali of the Federation of Islamic Councils attempts to articulate. (“Without knowing what those values are, we can’t define what those values are”? O.k., maybe there are immigrants in real need of more than basic English skills.) Going on about “sermons in English” and “homegrown imams” only highlights what’s at work in Mr. Robb’s mind. This is the kind of person who, standing in an elevator and hearing people speak a language he doesn’t understand, believes they’re speaking about him, negatively, insultingly, with hostility, maybe. He’s afraid, and he thinks if everybody’s speaking English, it’ll be easier to identify the bad eggs. In fact, he thinks the baddies won’t even bother to come to Australia if they think we’ll be able to listen in on their nefarious plans to disrupt the barbeque or cat-call women on Cronulla beaches.

A citizenship test is fine with me. You should be able to demonstrate that you are serious in your civil commitment to the country, just as much as that country should be serious in its commitment to you (Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks, anyone?). Requiring language skills commensurate with a citizen’s ability to participate in that society also makes sense. Applying a test on migrants before they get here or as a bar to entry, however, is just the White Australia policy all over again. Are we a free society or not?

Why Not?
But hasn’t Fox News in general always been the Bush Administration’s spokesmen? I’m surprised it took this long for full integration.

Learning from Rove
No, not that Rove, this one, by which I mean PM John Howard’s promise of serious consequences for ministers found to have had knowledge of the AWB kickbacks is all too reminiscent of Bush promises over the Plame leak. We’ll see. (Funny, but, that JWH should be making his promise to America. Bush didn’t make his to Australia. Makes you wonder what electorate Honest John’s playing to.)

Diplomacy Is Warfare, Now Undisguised
So much for the role of ambassadors: Donald Rumsfeld, elite Cold Warrior of a bygone era and present Secretary of Defense, has inserted the military into embassies around the world as rapid-deployment operatives to conduct manhunts and terrorist camp attacks, as well as to provide intelligence-gathering and operational planning, all without being in any way subject to the oversight of diplomatic staff and superseding the CIA. Now if I was a Latin American, Middle Eastern, or Asian nation suddenly faced with an embassy full of combat troops, I’d probably be on the phone to Washington daily, just to be sure if anything was scheduled to happen, I might be able to do something about it. Like complain. That’s all I’d be left with, after all, isn’t it, now that Rummy’s found a way to extend America’s superpower hegemony without resorting to full-scale war.

Mom-Safe Tattoos
Hey, club kids, afraid of what’ll happen when your mom finds out you got yourself all inked up forever? These tats only show up under blacklight. I particularly like the one outlining the bones of the hand, or maybe the flames. In any case, you can still be buried in a Jewish cemetery, if you’re worried about it.

Arise, Ye Workers
There have been a few well-publicised cases of unfair dismissals taking advantage of the government’s new industrial relations laws already and a few instances of the government being embarrassed into forcing some instances to be reversed, but this is only the beginning. Small businesses and franchises may find themselves having to pull their heads in a bit, at least initially, but that’s not going to last and it’s not at all true of the big companies, who’ll be better positioned to take advantage. There are plenty of ads in the paper for Human Resources specialists in the new legislation, and it’s obvious what that’s about. While office workers aren’t often members or even eligible to be, the unions are gearing up for the battles to come, and there’s a whole political party with its roots in the labor union movement. Meanwhile, head out to Hyde Park North on Sunday, 7 May at noon for the May Day International Day of Workers Rights & Peace march. Let ‘em know you want to work and your rights.

Family Dramas
There are only two points in The Squid and the Whale that bothered me, and they’re quibbles, and both come only at the end of this deeply painful and awfully funny movie: when Walt runs off to the American Museum of Natural History, he runs around the Central Park reservoir, which has its new fence up, of course, instead of the chain-link that would have been there in 1986, when the movie is set. Also, since he’s presumably travelling from Brooklyn, how hard would it have been to transfer to a subway line that would have let him out right in the basement of the museum? It isn’t always worth asking these questions, but maybe it’s my status as a New Yorker that always leads me down that path. The IMDB page also cites the movie for having Walt go in through the Hall of Biodiversity, a section not added to the museum until 2000, but that’s too fine a point even for me. Look, never mind the anachronisms and typical movie geography; this is a very good movie about a very painful situation among some truly selfish but also some purely struggling-to-be-good people.

Madcap or Mad
Is the President insane? I don’t even think he’s really as dumb as he’s often made out to be, although he’s not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. In fact, I think he’s of only average intelligence, not something you’d normally want for the Highest Office in the Land ™. I certainly don’t think he’s crazy, either, although his religiosity presents a bit of a problem, especially insofar as he really believes God told him to go into Iraq. In many ways, that’s the real problem isn’t it? He’s a True Believer, by which I mean he is so convinced of his faith that it overwhelms all doubts, regardless of whether they stem from matters normally within the quotidian purview of religion. Paper or plastic, Mr. President? God helps him choose. Peace or war, sir? And God provides the answer. In this state, he is beyond inquiry, beyond choice. His choice is God’s choice. At some point this does indeed become insanity, similarly to a case now being presented before the Supreme Court, testing the limits of an insanity defense. In that case, a young man suffering from schizophrenia killed a policeman he thought was an alien (although the Bush Justice Department supports Arizona’s limited definition of insanity, perhaps an ironic choice). This is a very comforting form of religious belief, but often very insidious as well. This is the kind of belief that sends people out to snipe on doctors who provide abortions, to plant bombs, or to themselves become bombs. (Is George Bush not a suicide bomber only by an accident of birth?) On a more benign level, this is the same kind of belief that sends some Holy City tourists around the bend into believing themselves the risen Christ. Stay out of Jerusalem, Mr. President, it isn’t good for your mental health. But that’s where he’s going, isn’t it? Is it democracy he wants to bring to the Middle East, or the Kingdom of Heaven? Let’s hope it’s really the former, because if it’s the latter, well, then he probably really is insane.

MP Shows Keen Grasp of Economics
I'm not sure which is sillier, reporting Peter Costello's remarks about inflation or the remarks themselves. Very good, Peter, you understand the basic principles. That must by why you're in charge of the budget. On the other hand, while he's warning us good and services prices will rise in response to the increasing price of petrol, he seems to believe this is different than businesses raising those prices as a response, which must be controlled lest we face a "wave of inflation." I guess he's relying on those industrial relations laws to keep wages from being part of the cycle. That'll fix it.

Best of Cats

We only got 5 of Bu-Bu's 10 years, but they were worth it for all of us.

When we got her, some immuno-deficiency problem had left her with a terrible itch and she’d groomed all the fur off her stomach to the point of causing lesions. Many trips to the ASPCA vet service in NYC had her periodically dosed with steroids, but that never held her long. Still, she wasn’t an unhappy cat, just itchy. Then we “transported” her to Australia, and she had to spend a month in jail without the vet support, and even then she wasn’t unhappy, just itchy and bewildered. Once we got her home, she adapted immediately and we were lucky enough to find a vet who could offer better on-going treatment. In no time at all she had a full coat and was sookier than ever, not to mention maybe a bit fatter, but for a cat on permanent house arrest, as it were (we’re in an apartment, and her previous owners had had her front claws removed, a horrible procedure that is, thankfully, illegal here), that’s pretty much inevitable. Bu-Bu was almost more dog than cat in the way she’d come when she was called, roll over, rush to greet us when we’d been out, and bring her toys to us for a game. She’d spend time grooming us, just to show she cared (she liked nothing better than to sit on the back of the couch over my head and lick my hair). Still, the itch continued, and with the periodic ingestion of prednisone and her congenital heart murmur, she was always compromised in her general health, so we always knew the day would come, sooner for her than perhaps for another cat. In retrospect, I suppose we’d been getting warnings for weeks. She wasn’t always eating well. She was having more trouble keeping herself clean. She was getting breathless. She would sit off away from us and just look uncomfortable. Things like that. Blood and urine tests showed no abnormalities, and even when her breathing seemed heavier than it ought, the vet couldn’t hear anything untoward. Until last night, when it was clear that her lungs were no longer able to get her enough air. We won’t know exactly what finally did for her, but whatever it was, it was very bad, causing her lungs to bleed and slowly choking her. We might have rushed off to the after-hours animal emergency centre and spent thousands on tests and an oxygen tent and left her overnight and into the hands of veterinary surgeons, but that would have just been cruel. She was suffering and we had to help her, so we did, and we’ll miss her terribly.

Subway Stars
Back in the '80's, there was a busker who roamed the NYC subways with his cat and a battered old saxaphone. "I'm the Man from Mars" he'd shout, "and this is Martian music." At which point he would begin to wail away on his sax, just blasting away without even the pretence of a tune. "I'll keep playing unless you give me money." And we'd all start digging out coins to get him to stop. He'd march off at the next station and reboard the train in the next car, where he would recommence his performance. I always admired the Man from Mars, although I wonder sometimes what his cat made of it all (I can't imagine it was enjoyable for it, either). Now I wonder if the Man from Mars made it to Leiden? Why not? If he made it to NYC from Mars, surely NYC to the Netherlands wouldn't be much of a trick.

Cover for Me
There’s a valid argument to be made by any senior official in any organization that delegated authority can result in actions being taken that turn out to be contrary to the obligations of the group as a whole, whether to itself or to some oversight authority, but there’s also the principle of “The buck stops here,” and that’s not one that you hear much of in government anymore. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer’s testimony before the Cole Commission amounts to the same litany of excuses Mark Vaile used yesterday, with the additional, seemingly contradictory, assertion that although it was within the purview of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to review the practices of AWB in its trading relations with Iraq under the oil-for-food program, DFAT had no power to investigate any allegations of wrongdoing or otherwise refer such allegations or evidence to the Federal Police. So what can DFAT do? Approve the license. What can Mr. Downer do? Nothing. It’s the job of the clerks, who were only operating as a mailbox anyway, and apparently a dead letter office at that. So what’s the point of Dolly Downer? I guess it’s just to look pretty and toss his curly locks merrily. Cute.

Grist for the Mill
The Australian Wheat Board violations of the oil-for-food sanctions program in Iraq continues to scandalize everyone but the government officials involved, with Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile today stepping up before the Cole commission to plead incompetence. Of his staff, that is. This is about what anyone would expect from the pack currently holding the majority. They seem adept at the I-didn’t-know, nobody-told-me excuse individually and collectively, singing the tune their master taught them. Of course, now John Howard himself is closer to having to front the inquiry, with a (confidential) written statement to be provided shortly. Not that it can be expected to help either Mr. Vaile or Mr. Downer, the Foreign Relations minister who will appear tomorrow, probably to face more severe questioning than Mr. Vaile had to contend with today, especially in light of allegations by the former managing director of the AWB, Andrew Lindberg of a meeting between himself and the simpering Dolly Downer. This mess stinks, but in the end I have my doubts as to how tainted any of Howard’s front-benchers will end up. This is a slippery bunch, and it would take more than a Royal Commission to nail them for their misdeeds, let alone their mismanagement.

Palm Sunday Peace
If you’re going to be in Parramatta on Sunday, why not join the Peace Rally in Prince Alfred Park? Right across from the Catholic cathedral (but strangely not including any Catholic presence, despite the Bishop’s office right across the street), it’s surely a good cause. Starts at 1 p.m.

Room at the Top
”Scooter, c’mon in, I’ve got something I need ya t’do for me,” the Vice President sneered through his cruelly twisted lips, looking like nothing more than an evil-minded snapping turtle’s impression of Elvis Presley.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Vice President,” the aide responded smartly.

“Now, Scooter, m’boy, this come straight from W. himself, y’unnerstand? That Wilson guy, his wife’s a problem, tryin’ a run this country like some kinda Hillary, ya know? We need a little word in the ear of the press, somebody not too sympathetic an’ all, right?”

“I know just the guy, sir,” said the aide, also considering the NY Times lapdog who’d been so useful lately in her unquestioning support for the President’s new war.

And so it happened: Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA agent is a ham-handed attempt to smear her Ambassador husband because he’d dared dispute publicly the administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein had been buying “yellowcake” uranium from Niger. Why not? Most Americans – and not to mention many others in the upper echelons of government among the so-called Coalition of the Willing and their citizens – have bought every other story peddled by these crooks and liars. So if Libby wants to claim Cheney told him Bush told him to tell the world - but not openly, of course – specially selected top secret information, maybe we should believe him now, right? The problem is, since he was lying then, how can we be sure he isn’t lying now? Perjury means nothing to these people, why should any other legal principle? Nevertheless, except for the part about Bush authorizing anything, I’m inclined to believe Libby was given an order and carried it out.

The Damage Done
It was no surprise to me to hear that the jury came back finding that Zacarias Moussaoui was “eligible” for the death penalty, even after the government screw-up on the issue, but now that the decision is to be made, I am surprised that the judge has decided the jury should be able to hear the flight recorder tapes from flight 93, the September 11 plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, preventing it from becoming a fourth weapon in the hands of the hijacker terrorists. I haven’t heard any of the evidence and haven’t followed the case in the news closely, but is it that he’s been tried as a member of that particular team, that took over flight 93? Because that’s the only way I can see for those tapes and the transcript to be evidence. Otherwise it would have to be highly inflammatory and its admission into sentencing deliberations a cause for appeal.

The Hammer Falls
Tom DeLay has taken himself out of this year’s race, admitting that he has become a liability to the GOP retaining his seat in the House as a result of the campaign funding indictment handed down last year, which previously had forced him to relinquish his position as majority leader, and despite having handily won the GOP primary. Could his prospects against the Democratic challenger, Nick Lampson, who’d been gerrymandered out of a job two years ago, have had anything to do with it? DeLay says not, leaving only the prospect of his indictment turning out to be a harder battle than he’d have time for if he’d stayed in the race or additional admonishments from Congress, something he’s experienced 3 times already.

Now if something could be done about Rick Santoro, in Pennsylvania, that’d be two strikes on the forces of evil in Congress.

Back to Govindas
Dinner and a movie for nearly the price of either is worth every cent, so we took a walk up into Darlinghurst to see Syriana at our latest favorite place to have it all. (Don’t be fooled, however, into thinking that all the reclined seating arrangements are equal; in this case we chose badly and spent the time watching the film with increasing discomfort.) Now we, like everyone else who reads or listens to reviews, had been convinced that while this was going to be a very good movie, it was also going to be very complex and hard to follow. It wasn’t, with the exception of some of the arcana of business/legal practices that weren’t exactly spelled out, and even then it wasn’t as hard as it’d been made out as. The obfuscation is deliberate, of course, as it’s part of what the film’s about in the first place: how hard it is for us, even those of us actually involved in such matters, whether as governmental regulators or legal overseers and just straight-up players, to see around every corner and into the furthest reaches of the abyssal depths we’ve allowed to be created. And while even that characterization shouldn’t entirely be taken as a negative criticism, since modernity requires complexity, this is an important part of the message: that by having made the world this way and letting things slide for the appearance of understanding, we make it impossible to improve the world. High-minded idealism, of course, but that’s no reason it should be so easily dismissed or even destroyed, and we all know that’s exactly what happens, even if it isn’t a result delivered at the end of a Cruise missile, which, if it isn’t actually happening now (per se, and leaving aside Iraq), is something that we have to acknowledge has been a method employed all too often just because American interests are threatened. Sadly, and this is a point highlighted in Syriana, the confluence of business and government is all but complete, and political exigencies are now shareholder-value driven. It’s hard to come out of this movie without bitterness, but it isn’t a cynical film at all. If anything, even if it is depressing as hell, it is meant to achieve a positive result, kind of like a smoke alarm: the house may be burning, but at least we don’t have to go down with it. If nothing else, come out of the movie acknowledging that what has happened in the Middle East (and elsewhere, Nigeria, for example) and the radicalisation of its people has roots well beyond the easily denigrated medievalism of the cultures there and the corruption of its entrenched regimes. Look at the oil fields and refineries and imagine that none of it beyond a tenuous job benefits you and imagine what that can do to your soul. Then try to imagine what perpetrating that has done to ours.