Cinema Suckers
Now that M.’s released from obligations to Project Greenlight, we can devote our leisure time to pure entertainment, except whenever I watch a movie now, I’m thinking about how many takes to get the different shots and what the director and cinematographer were thinking in setting up and executing the shots the way they did, and even noticing editing, something that was always too mysterious to even bother about, and all of that can be a bit intrusive, especially when I’m trying to follow the subtitles in a movie like 2046, which is a shame, in one sense, because the film is beautiful and a little difficult. The story’s simple enough, really, I suppose – a man who’s treated women rather shabbily and now feels trapped by his choices, trying to find a way to express and perhaps change what might have been in a way that would allow him to regain progress and purpose – but it’s complex in its delivery, a real movie-goer’s movie. This isn’t Star Wars, but a movie that leaves you thinking about its content and structure as a movie as much as just the usual narrative. There’s a Chinese scholar in the family whose impressions I’d like to hear, because I did leave the theatre wondering if the subtitles hadn’t left out important nuances, a sense I don’t always end up with from non-English experiences. Unlike Hero or Crouching Tiger (and I may yet get around to seeing House of Flying Daggers), there are such subtleties in the visuals, the colors more muted, the shots framed just off from expectations, such implications in the story that I have to wonder if language fails in translation. I’ll need to go back to the DVD’s now, to see other Wong Kar Wai movies, particularly In the Mood for Love, which has been frequently cited in reference to 2046, referring to the latter as a kind of sequel to the former.

The Labours of Howardcles
John Howard is pushing ahead on his long-standing wish to gut organized labor and leave the unions for dead. From his strike-breaking days on the Patricks wharves – and earlier – he’s been looking for ways to reform Australia’s industrial relations conditions in favour of management vs. workers, and with his pending control of the Senate, his agenda looks likely to begin in earnest. Read the Australian’s editorial carefully to see Howard’s intentions: reducing workers’ recourse to unfair dismissal protection - a way of allowing businesses to hire more workers, or does it make it easier to make unreasonable demands in exchange for lower wages? Oh, yes, the AIRC won’t be setting minimum wages now; that’ll be handled by a new, separate agency, one that will work within the scope of “economic conditions” – whose? Does that mean in a robust economy with low interest rates, wages can go down? Does that mean in a weak economy, when businesses are struggling, wages can go down? “By reducing the number of issues covered by industry-wide awards, people in individual enterprises are given more power over their own affairs,” says the editorial, but doesn’t that really mean that workers have fewer protections? Isn’t “people in individual enterprises” really “business owners who dislike the awards system”? “Why employers with 100 staff will be exempted from the unfair dismissal laws, but those with 101 are not, is hard to fathom,” but only to The Australian, who would prefer the elimination of such law entirely. Howard presents his reforms as cleaning out the industrial relations Augean stable, but he’s just shovelling manure.

Bye, Voyager
Wrong movie. Really, the circumstances call for this one to be referenced. Voyager I has officially passed beyond the solar system, sending a farewell transmission of its transition across the heliospheric boundary. (Additional pop-culture references: Starman, in which Jeff Bridges comes to earth because of Voyager's greeting card contents, and By Any Other Name, that episode of Star Trek in which Kirk et al. are hijacked beyond the galactic boundary.)

One Door Closes
The three finalists have been selected for Project Greenlight Australia, and M. is not among them - the bastards.

The screening was an entertaining event. Slated for 6:30 sharp, the invited families and friends (and a selection of the top fifty and top hundred from the previous rounds) were lined up outside the velvet ropes along the green carpet, where we waited and waited for the arrival of the contestants, vox pop'd by the documentary crew, who also took the opportunity to shoot some POV footage while we clapped, cheered, and set off our camera flashes for some reality filler. M. was ushered through first, looking terrific, followed by each of the others one at a time. While they posed for stills, the rest of us headed into the theatre and our assigned seats. Our seats were right up the front, which was unfortunate in that the clips were a bit hard to see. Fifteen minutes or so of exposition, including a diatribe on the perilous state of Australian cinema by the head of Movie Network (fair enough, when the top arthouse movie can't make enough to cover its costs and the top commercial release is such dreck that it can't either), and much thanking of the last minute participation of Microsoft (who added a $5K one-off prize for the best clip; pretty sweet, but we didn't win that either). We got a montage of the 3-minute bio clips, some of which were very inventive, and then the screen assignments, 3-minute scenes from each contestant's script.

M.'s scene was top-notch. It didn't have special effects, as a couple of them did, and it didn't have "sound design," which is what some of them had in place of the music you weren't allowed to use, but it played well, looked good - better in fact than some - and got a really good reception from the audience. The inventive title sequence drew appreciative noises around the theatre, making the hard work by Ingrid and Thomas and M.'s Director of Photography, Dom Egan, worthwhile. That shot near killed us all to get, but worked beautifully.

The Microsoft prize went to the clip with the most flash, and the final three - Solo, a crime drama; Heidi, which isn't about a little Swiss orphan; and Case - all exhibited talent and ambition.

Drinks and snacks in the lounge afterward, at 9 p.m. after all the speeches and so forth, and by God we were all starving. Not that even one thing that came through the door was vegetarian, of course, so by 11:00, when they chased us all from the theatre, everyone was pretty well done in.

Thi isn't the end of M.'s script, of course. Movie Network retains the option on it through the end of the year, and having made it this far, there's the potential for grant money for development and the possibility for production just on the credibility achieved. We may yet see this project come to fruition. And if she can manage another script, there's next year's contest, too.

Ready to Rumble
Tonight we find out if M. advances to the next round in the filmmaking competition. She's been in lock-down for 24 hours already along with her fellow contestants in the final 10, sequestered in a hotel in Rushcutters Bay where the documentary part of Project Greenlight is underway. She and the producers and everyone's guests head over to Fox Studios for a screening of the 3-minute scenes of all the contestants, followed by the announcement of who goes on to the next round. If M. advances into the final 3, she stays in the hotel two more nights, interviewing with the producers (and apparently Pia Miranda and Sam Worthington, two fine Australian actors, who have joined the panel at this stage, presumably to provide their own perspective, although I tease M. that they're there because they've already been selected as the leads in her script). As much as I'm looking forward to tonight's "green carpet" event, the prospect of the announcement is a little nerve-wracking. M., of course, is suffering most from this, and as the only one of the two of us to have seen the other contestants' video bio's, perhaps more understanbly so. She tells me the quality and content of some of these far outshine her own, not that I believe it. Besides, it's more about the script, in the end, and hers is right up there on all the measures.

I'm saving my Donna Karan suit for the premiere in December.

Calling Mr. Smith
The Senate is going to the floor over Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown. Harry Reid is calling for support. There's been a lot of debate over Frist's going "nuclear" over judicial nominations, but this isn't about whether or not filibustering is just a rule, and it's not about judges being entitled to a straight yes or no vote, and it's not even really about the role of the Senate to advise and consent to Presidential nominations. This is about power: who's got it and who's entitled to use it. Bill Frist believes the Republicans have all the power and that the Democrats should just shut up while he and Bush revise the governance of the country. That's not what an opposition is for, and the GOP only have a majority, much different from being in total control. Frist's extremist cohorts may muster the vote to push through on these candidates, but what they really want is to control the vote when the next Supreme Court vacancies occur, and there's going to be one sooner rather than later. Rehnquist may just be waiting for the opportunity at this point to ensure his successor - we already know how political he is. Fight the power.

Art and About
Friday, my employers sponsored a "renewal day" for the office staff. This is an annual event, a kind of retreat, and a variety of options are presented to allow the employees to refresh their spirits, in contemplation or in more active endeavours. I was too late for the bushwalk this year (and missed out entirely last year, due to one thing and another at home), but this year had a trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where we visited two exhibitions in the presence of a Uniting Church minister doing his PhD in Art History. This was followed by lunch at the Buena Vista Cafe, located at the top of the law courts building just above Hyde Park, and a trip to the New South Wales Art Gallery, where we were treated to the Archibalds.

Our first stop at the MCA was to see a retrospective of Mona Hatoum, a Palestinian artist, largely working in video, but also sculpture and performance. Very confronting in its content throughout, especially in its focus on identity issues, Ms. Hatoum's work is dark and violent, transforming everyday objects and experiences into objects requiring a thoughtful response to modern life and the marginalization of various persons of our world society, whether exiles, refugees, women, or the lower classes.

Rosemary Laing's photographs also work in a transformative mode, but are more, perhaps, subtly manipulative. Famous for her "floating brides" series, she's done much more interesting work, to my mind, although the brides do have a resonance of the iconography of the Christian martyrs. The carpets in the forest aren't even the best of her work, but are certainly the most playful. It's her other landscape juxtapositions, however, that stand out for me, showing off not only her painter's eye for composition and color, but also displaying her acknowledgement of the drive to domesticate the natural world lest it overwhelm us with its enormity and strangeness, which itself tells of our dislocation from our essential being.

Completing our tour of current art, along with a few dozens of others, we took a quick trip through the '05 Archibald prize entries, exhibited along with the Wynne, Sulman, and Photographic Portrait prizes. The winner of the Archibald, the annual competition for portraiture paintings, John Olsen's "Self Portrait Janus Faced" has been controversial (as usual with this prize - last year's pencil drawing of the actor David Gulpilil caused a stir for not having been painted, for example), but I think it was perhaps indeed the most worthy entry, although I also considered Ben Quilty's "Beryl" a remarkable work of great distinction. The other prizes had their stand-outs, too, not least being the photograph "Ali and Rahma" by Cassandra Mathie, and not just because it's a photo of two refugees from Darfur, Sudan, but because it captures in their eyes, their stances and bearing, their experience, both there and here, what it is to pick up and leave and adapt and perhaps never return, perhaps never be able to relinquish the past because never be able to pick up a future for longer than day-by-day. This, like the others did, is what art does best, despite our guides' suggestion that art has changed somehow in its role, rather than in how it accomplishes its task, the content and techniques used.

So my renewal day option was a success overall. I actually feel enhanced in my spirit from an outing with the arts.

Budgets
Peter Costello presented this year’s budget in Parliament last night, and it looks like lobster and champagne for everyone with a corner office. Again. Tax cuts at the upper reaches of income exceed those granted to the middle class and the poor by a significant factor, with the idea that this will help the economy to stay as robust as it has been. Unfortunately, just because the already wealthy get to keep more of their income there isn’t a correlative effect in terms of job-creation. Granted, if I can afford a new car or to renovate my kitchen, that helps (momentarily) keep automobile manufacturers in profitability or to give a tradesman a couple of days’ work, but the trickle-down theory of economics has been thoroughly discredited, even by its creators, so if anyone expects a top-end tax cut to create a new auto plant or to help gyprockers make ends meet, well, that must be why you voted for Howard (or Bush for that matter; except in his case it’s also because you want to be sure your children learn creationism over evolution at school). M. & I, for example, are living pretty close to the bone these days, and we stand to increase our take-home pay over the next two years from 1st July by less than AU$1,000, even after my next award increase, next year. It’ll pay for a few coffees, but it’s sure not going to help with the bills.

To be fair, I congratulate the Liberals with running a surplus; that’s no mean feat. I think, however, that there’s more to the budget than what you don’t spend. There’s also how you spend. I’m not going to kick over paying taxes, but if the government’s going to give it back, I’d like to see some substantial relief, for the poor and the middle class. We are, after all, the ones who carry the rest of the population, not the other way around. And while the government guts Medicare, reneging on its promises to ease that burden, they’re also making it harder to sustain private care coverage. In the end, these tax cuts amount to a brief caress administered in the middle of a beating.

They Said They’d Email Me
Arianna Huffington’s Post is up and running, in case anyone’s interested. They said they’d keep me up-to-date, but I found out via Metafilter. I should be put out, but it's a small thing, and I remain interested, at least for now. It has, after all, a pretty good California cast of contributors: Larry David, Mike Nichols, David Mamet, and various others of more or lesser stature among the punditry and the entertainment classes. Nothing particularly stand-out, except maybe Walter Cronkite grousing about the Democrats (he thinks they need two conventions: one to pick their nominee every four years, and one to decide what they generally want to talk about).

The Autumn Leaves
This morning, by the time I got to Lidcombe (maybe earlier; I was reading, so I didn’t notice until then), there was heavy fog across western Sydney, and I knew autumn had arrived. Sure, our apartment was a little chilly over the weekend, but it’s always cool in there, for the most part, because of it’s largely southeastern exposure, and standing on Glebe Point Road Saturday night waiting for a bus in just a tee shirt was cooler than I’d anticipated it would be, but something about the fog was the confirmation my brain needed to acknowledge the change of seasons. Probably it’s a result of no other visual cues ingrained. No leaves changing color, and I can’t trust leaf detritus on the ground, as the continuing drought makes that pretty much a given throughout the year. The presence or absence of pelicans and swans in the upper reaches of the Parramatta River don’t trigger any migrating fowl indicators for me, as a V of honking Canada geese would. Now that the temperatures appear to have settled well below 30 degrees, perhaps going running on Fridays won’t leave me gasping quite so badly. I want my 40 minute 8K back, too, but that may wait for winter.

What’s Wrong with Feminism
Everywhere I turn there are men and women slagging the feminists. Women don’t want men who are too feminine, the way they were in the 1970’s and ‘80’s, I hear. And I hear that women can’t have it all and are angry that feminism fooled them into trying. And I hear that feminism isn’t to be credited for increasing female representatives in government. Thank God for politicians like Julia Gillard, then, who knows perfectly well that the battles of women for equality aren’t over and have always been more complex than the chattering nabobs of the right wing punditry would acknowledge. This isn’t about “having it all,” a phrase that the media and politicians seized upon to implausibly describe the implausibility of feminism; it’s about a society that won’t support half its population to participate beyond the track worn in the carpet between crib and kitchen. Some women want to be mums and some want to be lawyers (or even Prime Minister) and some want to do both without being penalized for either, but instead get paid equally for equal work and credited appropriately for their efforts at home, regardless of how they choose to distribute their ambitions. Fair enough, I say, but then I was raised by a mother and father who valued each other’s contributions to the family and the world at large, who could understand feminism as more than bra-burning or whinging. The anti-feminist backlash now underway reminds me of the kind racial politics that wants no notice taken of race differences, the anti-multiculturalism that’s more often a disguise for bigotry than it is for the inclusiveness it claims. Virginia Haussegger has a point, but I’d be cautious of the critique of feminism itself. I’m sorry she feels cheated of having children, but the struggle for equality didn’t force that choice on her, and the problems of equality are not so simply reduced to child vs. childlessness. The argument may need to evolve, but feminism’s goals remain worthy and not yet fulfilled.

Revenue Sharing
I signed up for the Google ads, but nobody’s clicking on them but me (and why would they? Look at them. Pope memorabilia led the list for weeks, and now it’s lots of WWII trash.) I’ve been trying to use Email Cash and Pure Profile and A. C. Nielsen to get at least rewards – Pure Profile paid out $35 a few weeks ago (and I think they’re mad at me for taking such a paltry amount of cash at my earliest opportunity, but I really needed it. O.k., for drinking a beer with my Democrats Abroad fellow travellers), but overall this just isn’t getting me anywhere. Apparently what I need is a t-shirt. I’ll figure out a logo and a clever saying and get in touch with Café Press right away. Tomorrow, maybe.

A Judge and Jury of Your Peers
I’m disappointed that Lynndie England has had her guilty plea thrown out and a mistrial declared. Her plea sounds like the only bit of honesty to come out of the Abu Ghraib abuses. “You can’t have a one-person conspiracy,” the judge declared, but you can if the other parties involved aren’t admitting their guilt, and despite his testimony, England’s erstwhile boyfriend, Charles Graner was convicted. His excuses, that the photos were for “legitimate training purposes” and that the leash in the photos “slipped” from the prisoner’s shoulder to around his neck, are obvious and stupid lies and weren’t believed in his own trial. England’s admission to wrongdoing isn’t contingent on anyone else admitting to their own. To declare a mistrial is a miscarriage of justice. Colonel Pohl is not worthy of his post. We can only hope that Lieutenant General Metz will do the right thing.

Dr. Strangelove
(Or, How George Bush Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb)
It’s natural to steal from Kubrick under the circumstances. Nobody knows what North Korea wants – because they have no reason other pure madness to want nuclear weapons – but it’s worrying that the present U.S. administration appears so intent on actually using the bomb, let alone developing new ones. So when that death’s head Condoleezza Rice starts emphasizing America’s “significant . . . deterrent capability” against North Korea, my trained duck-and-cover response starts to kick in. Never, throughout the Cold War, was I convinced that Russia would fling its ICBM’s at the U.S., or that we would initiate a nuclear war ourselves. The North Koreans, however, present a much different problem. They’re not capable of the levels achieved by the USSR and the US – mutually assured destruction – so while they now may have a nuclear warhead missile with some frightening reach, I’d be more worried for the South Koreans and the Japanese than for California. It’s clear, however, that deterrence isn’t a factor (or it should be clear to someone with Rice’s touted qualifications). If Kim Jong Il drops one, with such a significant number of our troops tied up in Iraq, I have little doubt that Bush wouldn’t hesitate to respond in kind and in greater quantity. North Korea needs to be de-escalated as a nuclear threat, but there must be better options than we’re hearing from Rice and Bush and Co. beyond how many people get to sit at the negotiating table or how many bombs we can drop.

Chairman Dean
Doctor Howard Dean came to a special meet-up of Democrats Abroad Australia last night for an impromptu address to the faithful. It was a terrific turn-out, easily surpassing the election night (morning, here) watch in November.

Dr. Dean was, as expected, an excellent speaker, and we’re all grateful to him for taking time on his vacation to speak with us and to the organizers for their hard work in setting it all up and making it work so well (and to Bar Broadway for hosting the event).

The passion and commitment Dr. Dean brings to his role as Chairman of the DNC is evident, and if he is as effective a leader as I hope, the Democrats will find themselves better able to contend with the Republicans – especially the far-right element that has come to dominate that party – than we have previously. Dean’s grass roots mobilization skills and plans will give us something to rely on other than the powerful charisma of a Bill Clinton. Clinton’s sincerity was perhaps his greatest strength, which is fine for a one-off, but more broadly unsustainable, leaving Congress and the state and local offices vulnerable. Dean’s plans to take on every election at every level offer to spread that strength around and give the American people the opportunity to see a better choice for themselves and their children than they’re being offered at present, and before long they’ll make that choice.

Too many Americans now live without the aspirations of previous generations, forced out by the greed, the selfishness of others from even the most basic economic circumstances that would otherwise allow them to own their own home, help their children through university, retire securely. Republicans are cutting away health care just when it’s becoming more and more difficult to afford, instead of making it possible for everyone to see a doctor when they need one. Too many Americans now have to work harder longer than ever before and still can’t make ends meet, can’t be home to raise their children, and this has to change. The Republicans aren’t doing the job, because they’re too focussed on cronyism, cutting taxes for their friends at the expense of the middle class and the poor. The party of fiscal responsibility is the party of fear now, but we know about that, especially as Democrats we know: it’s the only thing we really have to fear at all.

Watching Dr. Dean last night was like witnessing Jesus in the temple whipping the money-changers. I came out more energized than I’ve been in weeks.

Harrison Bergeron
Dragging everyone down to your level doesn’t make you an intellectual, and hiring a White House staff member to provide recommendations on altering the editorial content of PBS doesn’t eliminate bias, especially when the review is based on one program’s invited guests. Why are so many Republicans afraid of intellectuals? I see this move as not dissimilar, in fact just an offshoot from, the drive to demonize university professors and, more recently, all teachers (although it appears English teachers especially, perhaps because they teach children to read and to think critically).

It wasn’t so long ago that various people who might otherwise have been relied upon for a liberal viewpoint were themselves targeting the so-called elitists in media and education, driving the “politically correct” usages into public consciousness, causing a general backlash that continues today, albeit pretty nearly exclusively from the far right. The main difference now, however, is that the purpose isn’t to elevate discourse, to be inclusive (howsoever far the arguments may have been exclusive originally), but to deny equality even while pretending to argue for it. You’ll hear claims that gays and lesbians don’t want special attention drawn to them at the same time as you’ll see a referendum on a ballot to enact legislation against gay marriage, or arguments that the 70-cents-on-the-dollar wage discrepancies between what women earn versus what men earn has become mythic, that women are doing better than ever, so they don’t need any special protections. You’ll hear someone say: why can’t they just be Americans instead of African-Americans or Native Americans or Chinese Americans (and you’ll hear the same argument in countries in Europe and in Australia), but you won’t hear an acknowledgement of centuries of oppression or discrimination, and certainly not an apology for any specific acts carried out in the past. No welfare, no pension, no “hand-outs.” The argument will often turn on “levelling the playing field,” making opportunity possible for everyone. But too often in practice what this amounts to is dragging down more of us, fencing off opportunities already arrogated to an elite much different from those being disparaged, those who argue most pointedly from an opposing perspective, that raising up the disadvantaged is a better method of benefiting all of society.

There is no “liberal bias” in the media any more than there is a conservative bias. There is the New York Times and there is the Wall Street Journal. If you look more broadly around the country, you’ll find a more conservative editorial content generally. In Australia, there’s the Fairfax papers and the Murdoch papers, and both publish content – editorial and news – from the opposite ends of the political spectrum, while otherwise attempting an open minded approach to the stories and opinions they print. PBS’s content similarly addresses society broadly, and there are some who see things more narrowly, so they perceive the programming there as too left wing. The same fight is happening here over the ABC, and in England over the BBC. We needn’t be surprised: look who we’ve elected to the highest positions in our nations.

Leadership Blues
John Howard wants to be king. Anyway, that’s what I might think if I was Peter Costello. Poor guy’s been waiting for a chance to take the top spot in the Liberal party for years, but Howard’s a tenacious politician, internally as well as between the parties in an election. His line about staying leader for as long as the party wants him was running a bit thin last October, and now that he wants a go at a fifth term, I suppose it feels that way to Costello, too. Well, if the Liberals want him, barring age and health problems, they can keep him. I don’t see Costello mounting a successful leadership challenge unless something goes very seriously wrong nationally, and nobody wants that.

T.V. News
First of all, who names an award for hawking up phlem? Oh, it’s not pronounced that way? Low-ghee. O.k., never mind.

It says a lot about the current state of Australian television, however, that Rove McManus has won the top award three years running. The show has its moments, sure, but it’s very little more than an hour-and-a-half of sophomoric jokes interspersed with celebrities shilling for their latest output. I did like that they were able to get Kirribilli House to flick their lights the other week. The way Rove rides the PM, it had to be the live-in staff, though.

Current Cinema
I haven’t read the book, although I understand it was hugely popular, but M. and I went to see Three Dollars over the weekend, preferencing Australian drama over even what was probably the last chance we had of seeing Million Dollar Baby in the cinemas. I like supporting the Australian film industry, so long as I’m not having to go see any of the usual crass culture-clash comedies featuring Paul Hogan, and David Wenham, for all that he’s a funny-looking bloke who sometimes reminds me more of a stunned mullet than anything else, is a very good actor. Frances O’Connor, with whom I’m less familiar, was also terrific, better than Wenham, in this outing anyway, but for all the performances being good, and the movie being directed (except the pacing is slow as a wet week) and shot well, it doesn’t leave me with an overall positive impression on the way out. I think the problem lies in the script, which is just too writerly, to literary. For all the suspension-of-disbelief problems (and they’re minor, except they add up), there are only a few times when you aren’t hearing the book, translated straight to the screen, without the interpretation that make that transition usually work. Maybe that’s because the author, Elliot Perlman, co-wrote the screenplay, or maybe it’s just a novel that wouldn’t have translated well in the first place. I’d have to read it to be sure, and I’m not inclined to do that now. Next time we splurge, however, it’s my call, and I say: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (and I’m not even a fan of the books).

Why “Social Security”?
Now that the GOP plans for Social Security are being clarified beyond privatization, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that this fight is more important than whether the public’s money starts getting pumped into Wall Street brokerage accounts. I caught a bit of the News Hour on SBS over the weekend, and the point was made that this program is named for its value: it’s “social” in that everyone is covered, rich and poor alike; and provides “security” for all without favoritism or discrimination. So what does Bush want to do? He wants to make it welfare. It sounds good to say that benefits would remain intact for the less well-off, but what’s really taking place is that Social Security would then be positioned as no different than any other welfare program, making it vulnerable to dissolution altogether down the line.

Right now, taxable earnings are capped at $90,000. Raising that limit makes immediate and long-term sense, but would hit Bush’s true constituency right in their most sensitive spot: the dollars that separate them from being middle class, which happens to be where the bulk of Social Security money will be spent over the next forty to fifty years. The top 1%, the ones benefiting most from Bush’s taxation policies, don’t want their money spent on anyone else but themselves, and while they can feel virtuous when it’s spent on the poor, they see no value in helping out the middle. Social Security isn’t just a feel-good program, however. It’s meant for everyone, because everyone, if only in theory, is vulnerable, and may someday need help. Let’s keep the emphasis where it belongs. Let’s keep society secure.

Movie News
For those of you keeping track at home, Friday I took the day off to be gaffer, grip, and general dogsbody to M.'s film shoot. For a 3-minute scene, there was a surprising amount of work as well as a considerable amount of time just standing around, not just for me, but for the lovely and talented actors; less so for the other members of the crew, let alone the director (M., of course) and her Director of Photography. Who would have thought there was so much work in setting up lights and making them shine in the right colors in the right directions (and indirections)? I spent my time mostly standing holding one thing or another, generally being quiet, or shooting a bit of ancillary video for M.'s PGLA "diary," which she is contractually obiligated to provide to the producers for their documentary show. M.'s offered me a credit on the 3-minute scene, but I've declined. Having picked up lunch, helped her read through the contracts, held gels over the lights, and so forth, there'd be too many jobs to list in the time available. Let the ones who do this for a living get the credit for their work. I don't even have a union card.

Bang
So now it’s shoot-to-kill in Florida. Not a state I’d ever spent much time in, certainly not anywhere I ever felt unsafe, either, but now it’s not a place I think I’d be very happy about visiting again. I’m sure that when, after a few weeks or months, there haven’t been any street-to-street gun battles, there will be those who say “See, we should all have guns; they’re perfectly safe,” but there are some interesting legal tests bound to come up before long. There’s enough crime in some parts of Florida that already involve firearms, but when the perps start taking caps back (if that’s the right way to say that), I expect some lawsuits and prosecutions.

U.S. Cities
I promised I'd stop doing these internet quizzes, but I thought it would be interesting to see how it came out, even though the selection of cities to live in is limited to the States.




>

American Cities That Best Fit You:

60% Honolulu

55% Miami

55% Philadelphia

55% San Diego

50% Chicago

Which American Cities Best Fit You?

So it was a little surprising that the top Northeast city for me came out as Philly, where I've never been, and which has never been particularly attractive to me. I wouldn't have expected Miami, either, but that the top choice is Honolulu is interesting, as it's the one putting me closest to where I live now. Sort of. A Pacific island, I mean.

Courage
Last night on Enough Rope Andrew Denton interviewed a Turkish filmmaker, Tolga Ornek, who has recently completed a documentary on Galliopoli. It would be a fascinating movie to see, having seen the Peter Weir movie more than once and having been inculcated with the story for many years, but more than that, I was impressed by some of the things Mr. Ornek said, notably that his relationship with Australians has always been profoundly positive (well, mostly), and that he has looked at himself in relation to the courage the soldiers, on either side, exhibited during World War I, admitting his doubt that he could do as they did. As frank as that admission is, it better reflects his character in light of the nature of war as it has come to be more so perhaps than any actual lack of commitment and bravery inherent to him.

World War I was the last "non-political" war, and maybe the first "ideological" war, at the same time. Unlike the Second World War, and unlike any war I can think of in the Cold War era (and certainly unlike any being conducted today, at least those involving non-Third World nations), World War I was about territory as much as it was about the shape of global power. Germany sought to reshape its destiny in Europe, Turkey sought to position itself regionally as a force with which to be reckoned by any others wanting a part of commerce there, and the others lined up accordingly. There were atrocities, perhaps none more so than the use of poison gas, and trench warfare, aerial bombardment, long-range cannon bombardment all contributed in creating modern war, but ideology wasn't at the center. Once facsism came into the picture, and communism, and race hatred, war became a tool of philosophy, in a manner of speaking, and it's stayed that way.

At least since Vietnam, speaking as an American, when my government asks for war, I ask why, and in asking don't always get an answer sufficient to the cause espoused. Sometimes, like Bosnia or Haiti, soliders are deployed for a humanitarian intervention where opposing armies are so intractable as to require force to separate them and create peace. Somalia and Rwanda are examples where the determination to apply force failed, and shamefully, but Kosovo worked, to the credit of those who acted. In Afghanistan, a cruel, repressive government that had allied itself with international terrorists was recalictrant in facing international law, and the United States acted for its own protection and for the good of all, and with considerable restraint. All bets since, however, have been off, and the question - why - remains unanswered.

I don't trust ideology as a motivator for war. Like Mr. Ornek, I don't think I would be able to display the resolve of that "lost generation," but I don't think either that that's what's being asked of me.

Agenda
Over at The Daily Kos, there's a breakdown of Senator Harry Reid's proposals for legislation to be introduced directly to the floor of the Senate as a "fight-back" should the Republican majority invoke the "nuclear option" to prevent filibusters on judicial nominees. Aside from the great love Americans have for the tradition of the filibuster, largely arising from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, no doubt, I'd like to see these bills introduced anyway. From the taglines, there doesn't appear to be an unworthy bit of legislation in the bunch. Why wait? Let's put it to a vote. Go on, Harry, do it.

Whose Backyard?
In order to get just about anything done in home renovation, the national sport of Sydney, it’s necessary to submit a development application to the local council (and there are plenty of them) for approval. That’s fine, as it keeps homeowners from turning their semidetached Federation-style home into a multiple occupancy mini-slum. There are horror stories, too, of DA’s being rejected on heritage-listing grounds, sometimes ludicrously so, but by-and-large, the development process works, even if it also largely amounts to just another municipal revenue stream.

So why would the State make it easier on the big developers, bypassing the local council approval process to stream projects through? Well, there is the argument that it would clear hurdles where projects straddle councils, but are there so very many of those? The list of projects offered by the Herald - Luna Park, Prince Henry Hospital, Pyrmont renewal, Optus, and Fox Studios – are pretty varied in scope and area impact, Luna Park and PHH being notable for some level of controversy from the neighbors. Interestingly, the Carlton brewery project isn’t mention, and that’s one I’d have thought would surely have turned up, because this power grab smacks, to me, of just the kind of “punishment” the Carr government would like to inflict on Sydney’s Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, for having thwarted their power consolidation move when City of Sydney and South Sydney Councils were merged and she defeated Labor’s candidate. This is worth keeping an eye on.

In Support of John Howard
Tomorrrow is the Anzac Day holiday, and there's a lot of buzz this year over Galliopoli. Over the last decade, Australians have been making a increased annual presence in the Dardanelles, where Turkey successfully defended itself against the Allied troops attempting a landing in what turned out to have been the wrong location. From April to December 1915, British, Australian, and New Zealand troops fought valiantly and in vain to launch from Anzac Cove their march on Constantinople, while the Turks, led by the man who would become Ataturk, fought with equal bravery and determination to repel them. The Turks, of course, were on the wrong side of history in that battle, allied with the Germans, but unlike thirty years on, we're not dealing with political war, but territorial, by and large, in what may have been the last such war.

In any event, because so many Australians and New Zealanders want to visit Anzac Cove each April, a request was put to Turkey to put in some infrastructure improvements, which was honored. Now there's a terrific beat-up going on over widening the road there, even without all the facts in place. Political opportunism may be understandable, but not the expense of good relations. As the article says, it's the Turk's land, and they're helping out at Australia's request, and there's no sign they've been in any way disrespectful of anyone in the process. Howard deserves a bit of credit for working this out.

As much as I disagree with Howard's social policies - his selfishness in dismantling Medicare and the pensions system - and his decision to support the invasion of Iraq, I don't think he deserves everything he's getting on the road at Anzac Cove. If nothing else, more people can now more easily review the futility of war.

Update (Forget all that; he's a jerk): Howard snubbed NZ, declining to attend their Galliopoli services, the first Australian Prime Minister to do so. Brilliant statesmanship.

Third Time's the Charm
If you had your money on Ratzinger, you bet the odds and you won. The "defender of the faith," as was his role under J2P2, is now the supreme pontiff: Benedict XVI. At 78, we're not likely to get the same kind of long service as his predecessor, but his ideology should provide the same, if not a greater, conservativism.

The internal prejudice against a younger man appears to me to stem from a reluctance towards change and from a lack of, shall we say, apostolic succession. 26 years, the duration of J2P2's reign, is a long time in which no one else gets to exercise any greater role than they've already achieved, there being only so much room for cardinals (despite the record number of appointments made in the last papacy), a fairly limited growth potential for diocesan appointments, and so forth. Of course, that's not the point, but every hierarchical system suffers from ambition, and Ratzinger's election appears to play to that situation. The church isn't noted for being open to experimentation, so however long Benedict XVI lasts, the next election isn't likely to offer any more change than this one does. Too bad, too, but if the scandals of the last ten to twenty years weren't enough to initiate reform, I can't imagine what will.

Entertainment Notes
So we made the scene in Newtown last night, out to the Vanguard for Ron Peno and Brett Meyers, the core of the Died Pretty, performing an acoustic set of all the old faves, and they were terrific. Made me kinda wish I'd been around for their heyday in the early '80's, but not too much, they were that good with the new arrangements.

Still, it made for a nice segue with the day's other news: M.'s made it to the top 10 in Project Greenlight. Her script is set in that period and that scene, so it was more than fitting to be revisiting it while we were also celebrating her latest success. (I know the other 9 scripts have to be pretty good, but I've read their loglines, and I think I'm married to the Next Big Thing.)

Promises
See, during the election, John Howard made all the promises, so if the ministers start reneging, he didn’t tell any lies. Like how much better Medicare would be. So Treasurer Peter Costello is going to reduce benefits, increase out-of-pocket, and allow higher prices. Tony Abbott’s awfully quiet right now, but he doesn’t usually have much worth saying on health care anyway, despite his portfolio. Costello’s also looking to create the largest political slush fund of all time out of something called the “Future Fund” (.pdf) a program designed to put some funding into the unfunded government superannuation plan. With a start of AU$25 billion, that’s some kinda mad money.

Meanwhile, the states have caved and are going to reduce corporate taxation so as to keep getting their piece of the GST. Well, a deal’s a deal, and cutting these taxes is part of how Howard got the GST through in the first place. Will it translate into any benefit to consumers? Don’t be naïve.

So much for the safety net. (Better be some jobs out there.)

Power to the People, Man
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Shuriken of Forgiveness.

Get yours.

(Read all about it. via Sister Cattle Prod of Reasoned Discussion, via Sister Sword of Courteous Debate.)

North Shore Animal Safari

It's not one of the mean ones, and with only 7 legs, probably somewhat less of a threat anyway, but he's a fine example of some of the insect life on the other side of the harbour. I suppose it's because the suburbs there - and undoubtedly many of the other near-harbour suburbs regardless of compass orientation - have such lush gardens, but these particular arachnids were everywhere.

Our excursion to Manly on Saturday was accomplished with the purpose of spending time with M.'s brother's ten-year-old twins, for whom M. has great fondness. Because M.'s brother (also M., but different) has himself always been athletic, the boys - and boys will be boys - enjoy sports immensely, not least rugby. Only Bohdi was playing, however, as Ry was recuperating from an injury resulting from a tackle, but that allowed Ry to provide commentary. As near as I've been able to tell, rugby consists of passing the ball backwards while running forward until such time as there's either no one to pass to or a hole opens in the opposition line or the one with the ball believes he's going to be able to charge through the other players whether they get out of the way or not. However, there does seem to be more to it than that, even though at this age level, there's some relaxation of the rules, at least if I'm any judge of offsides and so forth. I don't know what Bohdi's position is, but as the smallest on the field, he wasn't charging the line much. His primary function appeared to be the "dummy half pass" while his team had possession, and dogpiling on opponents in tackles.

In any event, having skipped an age group, the Manly Cove team did very well, not winning, but keeping the score tight. They looked half the size of their opposition, but hung tough all the way.

PNG Shoe-Bomber
It seems entirely reasonable to me that the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea would feel insulted by having to undergo a security search that included being required to take off his shoes. Yes, it wasn’t a full body search, but he’s the Prime Minister – yes, of a country plagued by violence – not a terrorist. Australia’s spending AU$800 million on aid to PNG, you’d think the PNG PM could be treated with a little more respect on top. Nobody asks George Bush or Tony Blair – or John Howard himself – to take their shoes off, and fair is fair. Alexander Downer is the worst foreign minister I’ve ever seen anywhere. He is incapable of accepting criticism and treats saying sorry as if it amounted to surrender. It’s called diplomacy, and it’s part of your job, twit.

Odds
People will bet on anything, including the next pope. Unless I can see ‘em parade through the paddock, though, I’m not sure I’m going to bother with this. Joseph Ratzinger (Germany) is the favorite, and Count Christoph von Schoenborn (Austria) is going off at the longest odds. I like Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga from Honduras, however, because of his point of origin. What with all the interest in a return to the Latin mass . . . oh, right, not that kind of Latin. Never mind.

A Man for All Seasons II
I don’t think Charles and Camilla should have postponed their wedding. Getting around popes is what the whole Church of England set-up was about. He’ll never be defender of the faith this way.

(And I wonder what J2P2 would have thought if he’d known George Bush would attend his funeral. After all, there’s a report he was a little worried for the end times.)

J3Px
Continuing on from the previous post, the question of who will be the next pope presents some intriguing doctrinal questions, particularly in light of the Roman Catholic Church's demographic developments over the last few decades. There is significant notice taken of the long-term drop-off in church attendance in Europe and North America, as well as a concomitant decline in the numbers entering the priesthood, while at the same time numbers in both areas have increased in Africa and Latin America, and, especially in the latter, have been accompanied by a rise in fundamentalist doctrinary teachings and behavior. While J2P2's stacking the college of cardinals with an apparently larger-than-usual number of selectors has suggested he has sought to ensure the apostolic succession achieves the preservation and even advancement of his own agenda, the cardinals themselves have spoken to their independence in such mattters, and one rather hopes to see that exercised, at least because the challenges faced by the Church in the near future will likely see the need not for rigid adherence to holding or deepening a particular adherence to the catechism but the strength of mind to express and inspire the "body of Christ" to accept and support a challenged theology. That is likely to be a dismaying precondition should any of the longer-odds papal candidates, i.e., those of more fundamentalist bent from Africa or to a lesser extent South America, be announced when the white smoke issues forth, so I'm rather hoping for just another boring choice: an Italian, maybe, although it would be interesting if an American was chosen - think of the conspiracy theories from that one. I'd also like to see more imagination in the choice of papal name. "John Paul" wasn't particularly inspired, and John Paul II was positively dull, although the reasons for both were obvious. We haven't had a "Clement" in a while, and maybe that would be a good choice, faced with a tumultuous time to come as the next pope will be.

He'll Always Be J2P2 to Me
I haven't always liked this pope, but just because we don't agree on everything doesn't mean I can't respect him. He's tried very hard to work for peace, and that's a worthy role, so we can leave aside the stuff that I think he's been wrong and even damaging about (and there's plenty). I hope the geezer won't suffer, now that it looks like his time has come; he's had it pretty tough these last years.

Webloviation
If I didn’t have such swell blood pressure, I’d really have to stay away from all those newspaper columnists and web diarists who invariably infuriate me, and pretty soon I’m going to have to really start every comment I leave or letter I write with “I am not a crank,” even though it’s becoming increasingly clear even to me that I am indeed about as cranky as the old man who starts every conversation with “when I was your age.” I am put in mind of all this from walking past the Parramatta River and seeing

the first pelican of autumn, reminding me of the Dixon Lanier Merritt poem:

A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican. . . .

Why? Well, my convoluted thinking appears to have made an obscure connection, as M. often finds occasion to point out, but when I can no longer stomach what some others have said, my mouth will tend to get me into trouble.

Never mind; it’s just an excuse to put up a photo. Later we can discuss why the pelican is a Christ symbol.

Work, or Be Damned
I tend towards agreement with the proposition that moving welfare recipients into employment is a good idea. The Americans with Disabilities Act had some strange provisions, but overall was positive, not least insofar as it put businesses in the position of having to accommodate individuals who otherwise might end up on the rolls. Work-for-the-dole schemes also have their positive aspects, as do training programs. Discouraging bludging seems to me to be taking responsibility, the kind of custodial relationship I want from government, not only because they’re spending my money for me, but also because I want the best value from that expenditure. Taking responsibility does not, however, mean abusing welfare recipients.

So why are single mothers being singled out? I wasn’t raised in a single-parent family, and, for that matter, my mom worked, so I’m probably not as qualified as some to comment on this issue. While it appears reasonable for single parents to take on part-time work once their kiddies are in school, there’s a lot more at issue than just school hours being suddenly “free” time. In fact, there’s all the appearance of taking advantage of the vulnerability of particular categories: unmarried mothers and the disabled. In regard to single mothers, leaving aside the issue of whether there is sufficient support in place for them to take jobs, is it just wild conspiracy theorizing to suggest that their status is somehow repugnant to legislators like Treasurer Peter Costello, that single women with children somehow represent to them all that’s wrong with society? I really do get the impression that John Howard’s government wants to take Australia back in time, with Tony Abbott looking for backhanded methods of returning to back alley abortion days, and the more general push to, on one hand, remove women from the workforce, unless, now on the other hand, their single mothers, in which case they’d better get jobs sooner rather than later. Maybe they can just strap the ol’ papoose on their backs and go pick some cotton, huh?

This is the point where you’ll start hearing the government (or at least its supporters) say, well of course we’ll have the support systems in place, but unless it’s already there or you actually specify what you’re going to do, it’s like the Bush proposals for Social Security, where unless they’re speaking at dog-whistle pitch, there’s nothing but the sound of the wind.

More Signs of the Apocalypse
Albany passes the budget on time. First the Red Sox won the World Series, now this. Perhaps it’s a parting gift to Pataki? (Not if he won’t leave.)

Real Estate
I want one with a clock. When I read the headline, I immediately thought of the former PanAm building above Grand Central. Now that would be a condo and a half, wouldn’t it? (It’d certainly cut down on commuting time.)

Foreign & Domestic
He was a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin, and now Dick Cheney’s son-in-law will be general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security. Has George Bush never heard of conflict of interest?

A Mind Is a Terrible Think
Before we get too, well, radical, and do something we might regret later, like, for example, allowing students to sue their college professors if they disagree with what’s being taught, maybe we should take a moment to think about what we really want: shutting down northeastern liberal campuses, like, for example, Harvard, who sometimes beat Yale in sporting events and are located in states where Ted Kennedy is from. (Does Florida State Representative Dennis Baxley really want to try to create a theocracy? It’s worked so well for Iran. Unfortunately, we’re talking about Florida, so it’s actually possible for this to make it all the way to Jeb.) I’m going to disagree with the Medium Lobster on this one.

Introducing the Pot & the Kettle (with a Smack in the Face from the Frying Pan)
James Morrow is wrong. The UN is troubled, but in Morrow’s editorial, he puts a lot of the blame elsewhere than where it belongs. He does this because he has an agenda: the dissolution of the United Nations.

First, Morrow refers to UN peacekeepers as being under the direction of the Secretary General. That’s not accurate. UN peacekeepers are troops supplied by member nations. If those troops act criminally, that isn’t the fault of the UN’s oversight, but of the countries supplying troops without a command structure in place to regulate their behavior. They go in and join in. When Australian troops went to Timor, did any of them commit crimes? No, yet they were there under the auspices of the UN.

The oil-for-food scandal does present a problem for Kofi Annan, but the UN’s examination of the actions of his son have cleared the Secretary General of any wrongdoing. Morrow ignores this, although the argument he’d make is obvious.

So what’s Morrow’s real problem with the UN? It’s the report from the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Once again, as in 2000, the UN has come to the conclusion that Australia has a problem in how it treats ethnic minorities, including its indigenous population. Typically of his kind of anti-intellectual, Morrow concludes that there is nothing to learn from the UN’s report, that it is unwarranted interference in Australia’s governance, and that the UN has been deluded by lobbyists or is simply acting out against Australia because of its participation in Gulf War II.

In his final paragraph, however, Morrow proceeds to make the UN’s point for it:

"These days, the UN has got a lot more than a bloody nose - it is also facing a crisis of legitimacy that has been coming for years. From the start, its biggest problem has been that, to paraphrase the old joke about the Holy Roman Empire, it is neither united nor comprised of nations. Far too many of the member-states did not earn their nationhood in any sort of real way (by, say, populating and cultivating territory or fighting a war of independence) but because someone a long time ago drew some lines on a map. And as modern history has proven, the resulting governments treat their citizens with about as much respect. For the UN to call Australia out for racism and human rights violations would be a joke if it weren't so serious."

What he fails to note is that the “someone[s]” who “drew some lines on a map” were largely the members of the Security Council: Britain, France, the U.S., et al., but he treats these nations as if they were squabbling children who’d scribbled out their boundaries themselves, and are undeserving of nationhood. In fact, many of those nations did indeed fight for their independence, countries like Kenya, India, Iraq, Iran . . . and they fought against the imperialism Morrow apparently misses in the world today.

The UN’s report is indeed serious, and Australia wouldn’t go wrong in a sober assessment of its contents. Having another round of Alexander Downer spitting the dummy shows just how ingrained intolerance is, as is Morrow’s tantrum.

My Brilliant Career
M. has a theory that everyone has a “best decade” or even “best year,” this being the time when everything about you was at its peak: physically, in your strength and health and in your appearance; mentally, in the clarity of your thought, or at any rate how you perceived it, and in the scope of your knowledge (although that, too, is equally and for the same reasons fallacious); and so on, through all the aspects and permutations of what makes up our lives from day to day and decade to decade. There’s a photo of M.’s dad from the 1970’s, and he’s handsome, debonair, clearly satisfied with every element of his life, however much that may not even have been remotely true.

The theory doesn’t play out too well when you look at it in detail, but it’s a pleasant enough exercise. In a similar meme, The Counsellor is looking back at 1978, musically, anyway, and promises a report. That’s a pretty good year to pick, but I’d say 1980, myself. That was the year I was far enough away from everything that had shaped me previously to break out from my influences into areas that at least felt more personally definitional. Musically, that was discovering X (the L.A. version, and the other L.A. punk bands, as different from NYC as from London, that difference, and each scene’s distinctions being revelatory themselves), the Gang of Four (who never surpassed their first two-and-a-half albums), the Psychedelic Furs (who only had the one good record, and it was really just versions of the same three songs, a clear example of getting a recording contract a little too soon, which was happening to a lot of bands then), and (God help me) U2 (I mean, “The Edge”; c’mon, really). I listened to Jim Carroll’s “Catholic Boy” and developed my Robert Fripp appreciation, and I found Fela Kuti’s afrobeat. Over about the next ten years or so, I got so eclectic, nobody could talk to me about anything, and it took at least that much time before I could get out from under the weight of all that Husker Du and Mission of Burma and start moving into more than pop music inventiveness.

By 1990-1995, I’d been a long time growing up, and there was more to come, as there is yet, but there’s more to life than music, even if it wouldn’t be nearly so much fun or so interesting without it, so I have to abandon the idea of the “perfect year,” once or future, hoping instead to manage to stay ahead of intellectual entropy, if only just.

Easter
There were four days off and only the one chocolate rabbit (but it was delicious). And then there was the second tsunami. At least this time, the 3-meter waves weren’t the source of death and destruction, area residents and government services having been sufficiently alert following on from Christmas. If you didn’t think the first one was a message from God, wouldn’t you think this one was? First Boxing Day, then Easter Monday. If we didn’t have the Biblical promise to Noah, you’d start to get all apocalyptic, too, I suppose. 2,000 more dead now, though, as if the situation didn’t remain difficult enough, despite Aceh moving from relief to reconstruction.

Does Miranda Devine really believe her own revisionism? So it was the conservatives who wanted to free the refugees all along after all? And everyone else were just opportunistic members of “socialist, atheist and green groups”, bent on fomenting hatred? What idiots she must think we are. Based on the rest of her rewritten history, it’s pretty clear that Ms. Devine has only come to this conclusion now that there are new Christian converts behind the wire. Madam, you are welcome to join the compassionate side of the argument, but we’d all be grateful if you could be honest about it. Just for once.

Passive Capacitance
7,551 kilowatt hours annually doesn’t sound like a lot (20.69 kwh per day, which is actually more than you’d think), but a good idea is a good idea. I’d be interested in knowing how much electrical capacity the mall’s system ends up replacing. (via Rebecca’s pocket.)

Covering Costs
When I first started working, one of the benefits my employer offered was life insurance. As I moved from one company to another, seeking a career, workplace benefits increased in number so that I soon had medical insurance, too, fully paid for by my employer. Within a short period of time, I was paying a portion of that cost, and every year thereafter, my percentage of the premium rose right along with the annual rate increases imposed by the insurers. My second job post-graduate school was in a small employee-benefits consulting outfit, where we sold mid-size companies restructuring plans to save money on benefits offerings even as they increased what they made available to their employees. “Cafeteria”-style programs, where the “value” of a group life plan was sold as part of a total compensation package, and HMO’s, PPO’s, and conventional hospital coverage presented different advantages and costs to be borne by employees along with their employers (the 401(k), relatively new at the time, and because it was little understood, became the hook on which the sale of our services depended) . . . all these now familiar offerings are a seemingly inextricable part of operating a business today. The employer subsidization of these offerings was translated by Human Resources departments into alternative compensation. You don’t just get a salary, you get all these things, too. As this became more common, more expected, the salary savings never materialized. Maybe because the cost of the insurance kept growing, even for the employee, as did the cost of accessing the care provided for in the insurance package, with co-pays and out-of-pocket minimums and deductible thresholds, all of which also grew, year-by-year. Employers have become increasingly disgruntled over providing insurance, giving rise to contract hires and the use of temporaries, all to avoid giving out benefits the value of which have increased right along with the price tag, despite group experience ratings (or because of them). It’s a Catch-22 situation, increasingly, in the States: you need a large enough group to get the lowest possible rate, but utilization of plan benefits increases the experience rating, raising premiums. It’s a system that’s breaking down, and Australia’s buying into it even as it starts to collapse in America. There are many opponents, but socialized medicine seems a better alternative (even while it’s under attack here) than allowing the present situation to continue through to its apparently inevitable failure, where only a few can afford insurance and health care itself grows further out of reach for the rest of us.

Poor Terry Schiavo: is life so limited a concept now that it cannot encompass death? Alas, her parents have lost their daughter, but refuse to let her go. Alas, her husband has lost his life companion and cannot be allowed to let her go. Alas, Congress is now dominated by ideologues so intent upon legislating morality from the cradle to the grave that they now intervene with all their powers, corrupting their sphere to do so. Some heartless demagogues have opined that there’s nothing wrong with Terry Schiavo except that she cannot eat, but that belies her diagnosed persistent vegetative state. Poor Terry Schiavo is not a machine, but she is being treated as one, not by those who would allow her to die, but by those who believe her life must be maintained at all costs, even the costs to her. This is not life, it is torture, prolonged and just as meaningless. She has no thought, no consciousness, nothing more than autonomic processes. It is only different from being killed outright in a violent accident or from some other catastrophic bodily failure other than that her death has not yet been accomplished in the event. These medical events happen frequently, from one cause or another, much more frequently than Congress could reasonably act, unless they do so for all of us, requiring for the future that every instance of such total incapacitation be met with an on-going maintenance response, that we all be fitted with feeding tubes, or breathing apparatus, heart-lung machines, and so forth, until such time as even machinery fails, our bodies rot away beneath the cold steel and plastic. If Congress had to insist on intervening in this case, perhaps they might have done so to provide the funding, the equipment, the personnel necessary to keep this woman’s body alive. I’m sorry for her parents, whose grief is so great they cannot act with compassion; for her husband, whose grief is perpetuated in the highest reaches of government; for Terry Schiavo herself, who luckily is well beyond the debate; for all of us, because we contribute to the pain of all if we will not contribute to its surcease.

All Publicity Is Good Publicity (Especially When It's Good)
"What do Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have to do with the Australian music scene in the 1980s?" Christine Sams writes in today's edition of the entertainment section of the Sun Herald, and goes on to answer: "The A-list Hollywood actors have shortlisted a script written by [M.] about the Australian rock music scene in the 1980s as part of their Project Greenlight search, which invites script writers from around the world to submit previously undiscovered work. [M.], who worked as a songwriter in Sydney in the 1980s before moving to the US, is among the final 50 entrants in the Project greenlight competition, which attracted thousand of entries."

I've always been a fan of a bit of goss, and never more so than today. The facts may be a little off, but that's alright.

When I heard that my Uncle John had died, my initial feeling was simply frustration that I would be unable to perform the (usually) simple act of attending his funeral, being present to offer Mom, my aunts and cousins, that small sympathy. We’ve had a fair few funerals here in the antipodes, and I already knew, even without those episodes for evidence, that being in company during such times is the best comfort we can have or give. Uncle John was an intimidating figure for me as a child, not least because my most significant memories of him center around his service in Vietnam, making him that much more remote, but also that much more awesome. He was a voice on a transistor radio-sized reel-to-reel tape deck, a system used for letters home. He would tape his letters to his wife and sisters and brother, and they would re-record over them their own communications. I have one of those tapes here, but nothing to play it on (and I think it’s actually a tape of the audio portion of the television broadcast of the moon landing anyway). Uncle John would appear periodically over the course of my childhood and early adolescence, and his strength and bearing (and periodicity) made him not to be trifled with, even as his status as a Floridian made him (and his children) exotic, requiring of scrutiny. As an adult, I only met him again a very few times, but by then I was able to at least experience him as having a sense of fun and adventure. Following his military career, he took a law degree and worked diligently as a public defender and later as a public prosecutor, both roles born from his desire to engage with his community and spend his life’s energies well. I was sorry to hear of his cancer, but heartened, to the degree possible, by the frequent emails from his wife keeping all of us up-to-date with his struggle against the inevitable outcome. As always, he did all the right things, including, in the end, making peace with death and helping his family to do the same. Bill’s got a better eulogy at his ‘blog than I’ve managed, but we all do the best we can under these circumstances.

Wolves Among the Sheep
So Paul Wolfowitz is to be rewarded with becoming president of the World Bank. And there’s any question that his ideology would influence development aid decisions? I’m sure he’s technically qualified, but I don’t think this is going to go any great distance in making the U.S. appear any less imperialistic.

Meanwhile, in the same press conference where he announced the Wolfowitz nomination, Bush claimed to use rendition to send terror suspects “back to their country of origin with the promise that they won’t be tortured.” This is a blatant lie. Otherwise, why would Mamdouh Habib have been sent to Egypt? His “country of origin” for the twenty years prior to his capture was Australia (who don’t ever torture anyone). And Maher Arar, a Canadian who was sent to Syria? Oh, right, Canada doesn’t use torture either. The extraordinary rendition system was established to put terror suspects into the hands of torturers. We’ve known that all along. That the Bush Administration has increased the use of rendition is something we’ve also known. He promised to do it following September 11, and he did. It’s the shame of the nation, or it would be if George Bush had any shame.

And in the Senate, the oil companies have been set loose upon the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 51-49, all because oil prices have gone up significantly since the beginning of Gulf War II. Another vote on a different measure has to pass before the ANWR is actually open for drilling, and then the House votes (and they’ve already shown which way they’ll go), but this isn’t looking good for pristine wilderness anywhere, let alone Alaska.

Democratic Iraq
There's a government in Iraq now. Although having a set of democratically elected representatives hasn't actually resolved the situation, and appears to present some complications the Bush Administration might have preferred to avoid, the new Iraq may yet prove itself when it sits down to write their constitution. Allawi's party seems pretty clearly out of the running for significant influence on the proceedings. With only about 15% of the seats, even allying with the majority Shiites (51%) just barely edges into 2/3's range for forging the constitution, whereas if the Shiites can form a coalition with the Kurds (27%), they'll have a lock on how the country shapes up. So how the groups align and how they act in the formation of the constitution and how they behave thereafter - whether they maintain amicable relationships or start bickering along ethnic or sectarian lines - will determine the success of Bush's second venture into nation-building.

Ethnic Enclaves
Nearly every city I’ve been to has a “Chinatown,” and some have a “Little Italy,” “Little Japan,” “Koreatown,” etc. Last night I discovered that Sydney has a Deep South pocket. No offense to Democrats Abroad Australia or to Scott, whom we were gathering to farewell as he prepares to return from the Lucky Country to the Land of the Free, but the highlight of the evening was Victor’s Soul Food Kitchen, a restaurant attached to the Glasgow Arms Hotel in Ultimo, just a few steps north of the Powerhouse Museum. I could have stayed for more meals than the one I managed. Victor, originally from Birmingham, Alabama, runs a deep south kitchen supplying victuals from his native region, and not excepting New Orleans, thankfully. The gumbo was easily as delicious as any I’ve had, and the jambalaya looked good, too. Various blackened preparations were also available, as well as traditional soul food fry-ups. Having elected a “pescatarian” diet, most of the menu was off my list, but that shouldn’t stop anyone else seeking an authentic southern (U.S.) dining experience. I’m sure that for Scott and his partner, it was an opportunity to re-acclimate tastebuds unused to the use of cayenne pepper (although Thai sweet chilli sauce is common enough, it doesn’t really compare). Meanwhile, we wish him all the best back State-side, and thankfully have Victor’s to ease our pain.

Idiot Wind
Gale Norton is either stupid or she thinks everyone else is. As Secretary of the Interior, her job, part of it, anyway, is to protect the national wilderness areas of the United States. As Secretary of the Interior for the rapacious George W. Bush, her job is to get into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and drill for oil. Never mind that she is doing so at the behest of two oil magnates now occupying the highest offices in the land for the benefit of Big Oil, according to her, we can get in, extract the oil, and never harm any aspect of the environment. But if you look at her arguments, it’s clear that she has little concept of “ecosystem” beyond plants and dirt. Stupid. The arguments against drilling in the ANWR go far beyond the set-up requirements. Regardless of ice-built roads, helicopters, and computer-assisted drilling decisions, the effect on the environment of oil exploration are potentially immense and well-known. In addition, there are few enough places on earth where we haven’t stuck our footprint, and plenty of other, non-environmental reasons we shouldn’t do it in Alaska anyway. There’s a reason for having a wildlife “refuge” in a wilderness, and drilling for oil doesn’t support it. Foreign oil dependency should move us off oil, not into destroying more of our few remaining wilderness habitats to get only potentially more. This isn’t about not having enough to heat our homes and run our businesses, this is about having enough to run our SUV’s, enough to profligately expend when a little - just a little – conservation would reduce our needs, and more innovation could replace the requirement for oil altogether. Gale Norton is trying to recast the argument in her master’s service, and we’d better not let her get away with it.

Then There Were 50
M. has gotten through to the next round. From 100, Project Greenlight has been winnowed to 50. Of course, now there's more work to be done to advance to the next group (20). Each contestant will have to produce a 3-minute "screenwriter video." The official rules say the video will consist of the screenwriter "perform[ing] a scene" to pitch the screenplay, but the actual guidelines haven't been published yet, so that may yet be different. In any event, congratulations; I knew it.

The Damage Done
We finally got around to seeing Collateral - on DVD, of course, because we don’t make it up to the theatres nearly often enough – and it was splendid. Violent, a thriller in the final sequences, but overall a worthwhile piece of cinema. Tom Cruise was, as everyone’s already said, nearly unrecognizable and turned in the best piece of acting I’ve ever seen from him. The political philosophies of the two men, and how they expressed the choices they made from their respective world views (not to mention the choices themselves), were presented in the best tradition of post-modern cinema: subtly, making use of the medium, exploiting what it means to see and to be seen, even while never leaving anything untold.

On the other hand, Dogville, which would usually fall into the post-modern classification, was, ultimately, so tremendously flawed, that even what was good about it, and what was post-modern, failed, perhaps not least because of John Hurt’s narration throughout. It wasn’t entirely the fault of the movie being presented as a stage play, because it was obvious immediately that Lars von Trier was twisting Our Town inside-out, although that did make for some wooden performances, but the script itself was so over-moralizing, and explicated every element of the film’s action and intentions, and not just in the voice-over, as to spoil the entire film. Does von Trier really believe this is all there is to present-day America, that there are no such flaws elsewhere, in Europe, for example? The bloodbath in which he resolves his critique is simplistic, and a surprise coming from the director of Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark. Everything worthwhile in the movie was lost. The Idiots is playing on SBS late tonight, and we’ll probably tape it, but I don’t know if I can screw up the courage to watch it.

The New Feudalism
The credit card companies have won. Barring defeat in the House (and how likely is that?), the Senate has sold out the country to the interests (and that's at nearly 20%?) of their corporate masters. God forbid anyone should ever get into such debt as to need to declare bankruptcy, but with these "reforms" it may not even be possible. Is there a provision in this bill for debtors prisons or workhouses?

Public Art
I almost want to live in this building. Dupain’s photos are often truly amazing, right up there with the works of Bresson et al., and Australia, especially Sydney, hangs on to their imagery as quintessentially iconic. Etching one of them into a building may seem to be going a little far to some, but I think the whimsy, as much as the iconographic element, is one of the more worthy architectural efforts I’ve seen. I suppose, if I'm going to quibble, I'd wonder why this isn't out at Bondi itself, rather than over by Darling Harbour, but maybe Bondi's seen enough development for now.

Crying Hitler
As A. points out, Senator Robert Byrd deserves to be listened to, and if he's pulling out the comparison, its legitimacy has to be seriously considered. The restrictions of civil liberties and the procedural changes being instituted to the benefit of a single party presently in the majority aren't simply matters of "well, if the Democrats (or Left or [insert anti-GOP affiliation here]) were listening to what Americans wanted, they'd be doing this themselves or would be the majority," but rather a consolidation of power entirely consistent with the actions of the fascist governments of the 1930's. As eminent mathematician Kurt Goedel once showed, it can happen here. It can happen anywhere. The Consitution isn't a complete safeguard, only the people it serves.

Water Park
Cook & Phillip Park, situated in front of St Mary’s Cathedral, is mainly a skateboarder hang-out. For some reason, the designers of the plaza decided to build the area in front of the water features as a sort of amphitheatre. I suppose events of one kind or another are held there, but the main result visible has been the damage to the stone benches along the inclined areas. There’s something to be said for building skateboard parks.

Meanwhile, one of the more attractive features of Sydney is the water, and not just in the harbour
or at the beaches. The city has, as so very many do, a wealth of fountains, some more creative than others. Cook & Phillip, for example, turns the concept into a miniature wetlands:

More traditional waterworks are also present:

I’m not sure of all the figures represented, although Perseus and Diana are definites. That may be Jason with the goat and ram, and the guy on the top? It would have been helpful if any of the plaques didn’t just say the fountain was a gift of the Archibalds, but perhaps I’ll encounter someone with a better grounding in Greek or Roman sculptural representations. But at least they’re pretty, unlike some others:

Too Old to Fly, Too Expensive to Ship
Cui Yu Hu is 104 years old and, until yesterday, an illegal immigrant. Now Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has kindly allowed her to stay. For the last 10 years, she’s been “illegal,” having been denied an aged parent visa. She had what’s known as “bridging visas” issued over that time, so how exactly she’s been illegal is hard to figure. One of those technicalities, I suppose. Meanwhile, she’s also been denied passage on any airlines as too frail to make the passage back to China. Now, not only can she stay with her adopted daughter and son-in-law, but she’ll also get Medicare. Not that she’ll cost much to the system, I expect, at her age.

This should never have become such an issue, but the focus on MP Vanstone’s portfolio and performance over these past months has been deservedly intense, and the requirements to get her attention on anything sufficiently formal as to ensure a protracted and painful process. With the policy of mandatory detention for refugees regardless of whether family or community support is already established and regardless of age, followed by the high-profile Cornelia Rau case, various other diplomatic screw-ups, and now bureaucratic efforts towards deportation of helpless centenarians, it’s pretty clear there’s a problem.

Government is hard; there are many competing interests clamoring for preference; but it doesn’t have to be hard-hearted: that’s why these ministers have these positions; and, sure, there is a problem with an open immigration policy in Australia, as in many other places, although perhaps for many other reasons. It’s pretty much undeniable that Australia simply cannot support too large a population. We’re pushing the water-use borders right now, and the housing and transportation infrastructure is getting a bit stretched. With socialized medicine and other economic safety-net programs, there has to be some concern that the bludgers don’t take all the rest of us for a ride, but there doesn’t appear to be any substantial concern that the country is approaching an inability to meet the requirements it’s set out for itself, unless you want to count the apparently about-to-fail private health insurers Tony Abbott keeps throwing our money at.

We’re told over and over that we live in a “post-September 11” world and that our policies and actions need to reflect that, but what I see is a hardening of previously set positions or a return to Cold War strategies and paranoia. Every immigration issue that comes up, among other policy-related events, points to the entrenchment of fear and makes me suspect the cynical motivation of those digging in up on the hill.

UNaction
God knows the United Nations needs a shake-up, and maybe putting one of the more aggressive critics in as ambassador will help, although I’m not convinced just from Condoleezza Rice’s say-so. It isn’t so much whether the UN was good or bad on Iraq – because in the last round in Iraq, they weren’t allowed to do their job or believed insofar as they were able to produce anything towards a result – but the inaction in Africa has been an embarrassment, or would have been to any remote observer, if any such were possible, whereas for most of us, well, were as complicit as our governments fail to act, whether with the UN or in some other coalition or even alone, as happened in Rwanda and now in Sudan. So oil-for-food scandals aside, there are diplomatic progress problems.

Unfortunately, it’s the permanent members of the Security Council who, in wielding their absolute vetoes, cause the problems, and the U.S. isn’t the least of the trouble-makers there, even if the neocons and Iowa farmers believe it’s the French. Pressing for action, getting movement more than mere resolutions, those are the kinds of activities I want to see, but I expect, perhaps cynically, something much different. The UN could be effective, if the rich and powerful nations of the world would make it so, and starting with the U.S., and then John Bolton’s concept of shifting and opportunistic alliances, the kind that have gotten us into trouble in various other regions of the world, wouldn’t be necessary, allowing more idealistic, global efforts. The appointment of John Bolton seems to perpetuate the worst diplomatic tendencies of the Bush administration.

Creature Features
While M. was out flying the high-culture flag with her Hollywood friends at the top-100 after party, I was similarly engaged in ensuring that only the highest examples of filmic art came anywhere near my brain. Alien vs. Predator is right up there with all the finest of the "x meets x" horror genre. You can take that however you like, but for just over an hour and a half, I was marginally entertained. Like most of the Frankenstein entries, the biggest problem is that the main characters don't speak English. "Hiss" says Alien. "Click-click-click" says Predator. "Aiee" says all the humans. "Ugh" says I. What is it that compels me to watch these things?

Taxing Spending
Here in Australia, there's been the GST, the Goods and Services Tax, for a few years already. The GST applies to everything you spend money on, with the exception of "essential food items." But a coffee, pay a tax. Hire a lawyer, pay a tax. 10% of the purchase is tax. In New Zealand, I understand it's 15%. Is that, essentially, what Alan Greenspan is proposing? In would be a big shift, but it sounds more like a ploy to distract everyone from privatizing Social Security.