Immanence vs. Imminence
At the beginning of last week, our Prime Minister assured us that the word “the” needed to be changed to “a” in order for police to foil a terrorist attack. It now appears to have been foiled. These appear also, however, to be the same people identified a year ago as having been videotaping landmarks and industrial sites as part of a planning operation towards maybe conducting an attack of some kind. At that time, they were merely kept under surveillance as “persons of interest,” and nothing further was done. Now, however, that they can be arrested regardless of whether “a” terrorist action occurs, instead of the one they were planning under the old wording, arrests have been made.

Yeah, I’m being a bit snarky here, but not because alleged terrorists have been arrested. No, I’m mainly interested to see what will happen in the courts. The word change in the law under which they’ll be charged seems vague to me, suggesting that the government is attempting to reduce its burden of proof to such a level that the case may end up being thrown out. I don’t suppose I’ve got any Q.C. reading this, so it may be hard to find a solid opinion, and I’ll just have to wait to see if it travels up to the High Court.

Meanwhile, over in France, rioting continues, and while it has nothing to do with what many are taking the opportunity to describe as a clash of civilizations, linking the riots to terrorist groups without any regard to the facts, there is a concern that disaffected and marginalized Muslims in the slums of Paris are prime recruiting targets for terrorist organizations (n.b., the WSJ article – and, hey, look: the Journal’s free this week; thanks, Gothamist – is addressing mainstream groups gaining influence, not terrorists, although they still don’t like it), just as outfits like Hezbollah used the failure of the PLA to transition itself into a mainstream political party to gain support among Palestinians. France’s tradition of what might be called “monoculturalism,” which has always been a hollow promise of equality among its citizens, at least for those who come from former colonies and the like, is proving the success of multiculturalism, but also the pitfalls for any society where distinctions of class or race or ethnicity or gender or . . . are allowed to excuse prejudices. Reading Gotham regarding the rise of the Irish in NYC in the 19th century, it’s clear that historically, a failure to allow integration lies at the heart of conflicts between groups, rather than any refusal to assimilate, and this is where France is having its problems now. So while it’s important to note that what’s happening in Paris and increasingly around the nation is class-based, the potential for it to become cultural is a danger that must be addressed as much as the law-and-order issues, and one that even multicultural societies would do well to act on, too.

Such a Curious Tree
Ah, it’s jacaranda time again, with the lovely purple flowers putting bold splashes of color in eye-catching drops across the city.
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I love this time of year.

15 November
Via the masked ones, notice arrives that this will be the day we gather to let Parliament know we value our rights at work and put them on notice that we're not fooled by the AU$55 million ad campaign. Spread the word and join in.

Le Fee Verte
I’d be interested in trying out some absinthe sometime, but at AU$130 for some Nouvelle-Orleans, it might wait until I’m more solvent.

New Justice
Is Samuel Alito a Constitutional constructivist? So far it seems so. I’m opposed to that line of thinking on the bench, preferring Breyer’s approach, if anything. So it’s been interesting reading the New Yorker’s occasional series of the present set of Justices, Breyer’s being the most recent. It was also fascinating to read what Ann Althouse, University of Wisconsin law professor, has to say on the latest candidate to the highest court in the land. Her opinion of Judge Alito is based on decisions regarding the establishment clause, protecting the free exercise of religion and in apparent opposition to the Supreme Court Justice Alito’s most often compared to, Antonin Scalia. It’s nice the Native American got to keep his bears and the cops their beards, but there’s a lot more at stake than religion. Yes, indeed, Professor, liberals will “anguish” over Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which Judge Alito decided that a woman is merely her husband’s chattel when it comes to child-bearing. And regardless of whether we commend Bush for “nominating someone with so substantial a judicial record,” let’s keep in mind that this is his second appointment and the first hadn’t nearly the record. So warning’s that the Democrats will find their nominees thwarted someday in the future, while not falling on deaf ears, are nevertheless insulting. Either the man’s qualified for the role or he isn’t. And he’s not looking all that good right now.

The Risk
ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, is at the forefront in protecting the country from terrorist attack. The chief, Paul O’Sullivan, has recently appeared before the Senate to address the genuine threat of attack here. Or anyway, the feasibility of such an attack. I agree, it is indeed feasible. But that’s not the question I’d ask of ASIO. Instead, I’d ask, how likely is it? To that, Mr. O’Sullivan has no answer.

Mr. O’Sullivan references four instances of terrorism having previously occurred in Australia: in 1986 the Turkish Consulate in Melbourne was bombed. In 1982, the Israeli Consulate and the Hakoah club in Sydney were bombed (negligible damage, two people injured). In 1980 the Turkish Consul-General was assassinated by Armenian separatists. And in 1978 the Hilton hotel was bombed. The perpetrators of the 1978 attack remain unknown, damage was negligible, and casualties limited to three deaths and a few injured. Interestingly, in every instance the attack was carried out by foreigners against foreign interests. Some have suggested that the 1978 attack was actually ASIO itself, acting to obtain increased funding at a time when its usefulness was seen as slight.

But despite the increased threat – yes, one that has existed before September 11, 2001, but that doesn’t negate the increase that’s occurred since joining the Iraq debacle – no credible threat has been received of an attack here. That there was no warning received of attacks in Bali is of little relevance to actions anticipated within Australia, especially since ASIO is only charged with “collecting foreign intelligence in Australia.” They are not, in other words, the CIA, an agency charged with overseas operations. The Bali attacks were carried out by Indonesian national on Indonesian soil using Indonesian materials. Unless Indonesia had information and elected to share it with ASIO, Australia wasn’t going to get any warning. As of Australia itself, protecting against attacks is why ASIO exists, and it needs to anti-sedition legislation to conduct surveillance or investigations.

So while it’s gratifying to know that ASIO will conduct itself within the limits of the law, now that we’re looking at unwarranted and ineffective increases in their powers and those of the police, that isn’t particularly reassuring. I note that former Federal Police Commissioner Mick Palmer has been hired on as a per diem consultant to investigate terror attacks but without the power legislated to actually do anything, let alone anything to actually investigate. That the legislation is expected no earlier than sometime next year is a telling indicator of how unnecessary the new anti-terror laws themselves are. There has been no attacks, and ASIO’s got Australia all sewed up regarding the alleged 70 or 80 “persons of interest,” some of whom it’s already been shown weren’t even interesting.

Although it appears the legislation has popular support, it looks increasingly like a put-up job, one of those instances where “you can fool all of the people some of the time,” as the saying goes.

Making Things Worse
As if the “USA Patriot Act” wasn’t bad enough, prior to the renewal of some of its already egregious provisions, House Republicans have decided that the 20 capital crimes covered in the legislation aren’t enough; another 41 are somehow called for, including imposition of the death penalty for donating money to a charity that turns the money over to someone else who then goes on to commit a terrorist act. They’ve also decided that the jury system is not reliable enough in condemning convicted criminals to death, so the legislation has been amended to reduce the size of juries and allow prosecutors to go back before the court again and again until they get a death penalty verdict. This is disgusting. I’ve railed against what the Howard government is doing here with anti-terrorism laws, but the Coalition’s nothing compared to the GOP’s exhibition of blood-lust.

Surplus
Poor money-management is a hallmark of government, whether it’s characterized by a deficit or a surplus. Canberra has been touting its annual budget surplus for a few years now, pointing it up gleefully as if it represented good government. It doesn’t. Good government spends into deficit when it has to, but generally runs its books balanced. But while they’ve got all that money – indicative as it is of a robust economy – they might as well spend it. So they’ve spent over AU$55 million on advertising for their plans to reduce the minimum wage and eliminate the balance of power between workers and corporations, patently in service to their commercial masters. You can’t switch on your television without seeing at least a half-a-dozen ads of an evening or open a newspaper without encountering two full face-to-face pages touting the desperate need for the legislation, as if the economy were in dire straits. It isn’t, and the legislation is very bad, and, interestingly, the overall public response to the advertising – and the legislation - has been wholly negative. Calling the ads “educational” is fatuous. Meanwhile, Howard’s “mandate”, unexpressed during the campaign last year, and his government’s surplus just burn a hole in his pocket.

Not a Drop
Having spent three years in this sun-burned country, I understand that the drought conditions require a conscious and perpetual effort at conservation, and that water is a resource we all share and must share well. But after watching what the NSW state government did with the cross-city tunnel – building public infrastructure to the guaranteed benefit of a private corporation at the daily out-of-pocket expense of the citizenry – the idea that that’ll the same for water is a bit too dry if it’s meant as humor. NSW gathers many millions from a raft of real estate and other taxes. Balance the books, Mr. Iemma, and spend your budget wisely. Forcing us to pay private companies for public services is not good government. Oh, and desalination is just a short-term fix to begin with. If you really want me to pay for something, it better be worth the long-term costs you’re seeking to impose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(All via Metafilter.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labour Day
In honour of the stonemasons and building workers of Melbourne, who brought the world the 8-hour day in 1856, we've got a three-day weekend. (Think about joining a union.)

Ace Low
I recall reading some time back that Annie Proulx had decided to quit novel-writing in favor of short stories. The first Proulx novel I read was The Shipping News, which was wonderful (if a terrible movie), and while Accordion Crimes didn’t live down to the reviews, it didn’t live up to the expectations its predecessor set. Postcards was good, but no more. That Old Ace in the Hole, Proulx’s last (or latest) novel turned up in a second hand bookstore clearance sale, where I picked up a nice hardback edition for about five dollars, and it falls someplace in between the others. It’s not as good as Shipping News, but sometimes rises to that level, sparkling in particular when some of the locals get to telling stories to Bob Dollar, the rather ill-defined central character, whose main purpose seems to be to record impressions and listen to other peoples tales of the past. Minor characters pop up, sometimes with entire chapters devoted to them, for no purpose whatsoever, leaving the impression that the reason Proulx has abandoned novels for short stories is because her novels have become a string of stories she struggles to connect with somewhat less-than-deathless prose. While I have no objection to indeterminate endings, this novel’s conclusion seems to wind itself up against everything that’s gone before it, if largely because the protagonist is such a nonentity. Even the denouement is perplexing, a rationale for the book’s title more than anything else. Clearly Proulx loves the old stories, loves the lost people and cultures and land, and if nothing else Ace establishes that love and does a fair job at making a record where one might not otherwise have existed of the sounds and sights of a part of the America that is smothered in corporate agriculture, losing its character to the facelessness of modern, urban society. Proulx has an ear for dialect and dialog and an eye for telling details and sweeping vistas alike, but as good as the writing often is that’s not enough in the end. Maybe her stories are better. I’ll have to try those next.

We’ll Miss Him by that Much
Don Adams, 82. Get Smart was one of the funniest shoes shows (yes, the shoe, too) I’ve ever seen, and if the comic genius of Buck Henry and Mel Brooks was the driving force, Don Adams’ delivery was its essential delivery vehicle. Tennessee Tuxedo, too.

Welcome Back, Carter
Now he recommends conservation? While Jimmy Carter had his oil policy imposed upon him, Bush’s troubles are a compound of natural disaster and disastrous management of Middle East policy, the latter a significant point of difference between the two presidencies. While Bush fancies himself a latter-day Reagan, with the fiscal extremism to prove it, he shows none of the subtlety, such as it was, of that administration, let alone even an iota of the compassion of the preceding incumbent. Is this how it has to go in American politics: soft followed by hard, peace followed by war, Carter-Reagan/Clinton-Bush? It still comes down to selfishness: the economic prosperity of the 1990’s led to not just complacency but a level of get-it-while-you-can greed readily exploitable by the sons of privilege who’d been living that lifestyle all along. There’d have been no suspect rebuilding contracts and a solid reconstruction plan under Carter – or Clinton, for that matter. If you insist on talking about moral values, I’d suggest looking at your own behavior first: mote vs. beam, and all that.

Erosion
With Howard convening a national anti-terrorism summit between himself and the state leaders, it looks like the new powers recently granted in Victoria, the broad powers already in place in NSW, and the sweeping draconian changes proposed by the opposition in the federal parliament are poised to become our new reality. Lots of people are very happy about this, but when you listen to what they’re saying, the return to the 1930’s parallels are frightening. Morris Iemma, Premier of NSW, openly acknowledges that the proposals represent a permanent elimination of civil liberties. Howard isn’t so honest, proposing only that sunset clauses are “unnecessary” because noone can tell him when the threat of terrorism will end. Well, that’s true enough: it won’t end. Certainly not under any existing policy in force today. But the ability for police to lock down a suburb or to enter your home in force without a warrant or any other mechanism to ensure reasonable suspicion, to arrest and hole you without charge or access to a lawyer, to act without any requirement that you ever learn why or have any recourse for redress, these are laws that won’t make us any safer than the laws we have but send us heading pell-mell towards a full police state anyway. This is how fascism occurs. Head-in-the-sand pundits will say there’s no parallel - and they’re right; there isn’t – but there doesn’t have to be. I don’t believe Bush or Howard or Blair want to be the next Axis triumvirate, but without the controls developed over the last two centuries to ensure democracy’s survival, the potential for its destruction is easily achieved despite best intentions. Checks and balances – an executive matched against a legislature with both accountable to an interpretive standard managed by a strong judiciary – keep us safe. Every time we circumvent those controls, we make the future a dark place to contemplate. No wonder nobody much bothers about human rights in China anymore. We’re becoming more like them every day.

Canon Fire
Catholic Archbishop George Pell has weighed in on the literature debate, advocating the books and methods he is most comfortable with, in opposition to the use of modern critical methods and texts. While “road signs” and “advertisements” may not meet the standards of a large number of people as literature, there needs to be more in the analysis of the curriculum than whether or not schools are teaching enough Shakespeare, by my reckoning. Critical analysis isn’t simple. Learning to read isn’t hard. Putting the two together, however, is the biggest trick of all. How many children have been turned off from reading anything, let alone anything more difficult than a supermarket circular? While many will be quick to accuse literary criticism tools as the precipitating factor, there’s more involved. I was lucky to grow up in a household that valued reading, even just for its own sake, but that didn’t fail in its efforts to engage in analysis. Other children aren’t so lucky, and they perpetuate the attitude for generations. How many times have you heard the argument “I don’t like novels because they’re not true”? “Art for art’s sake” isn’t going to help these people much. And how many people do you know who don’t read the weekend edition let alone a daily newspaper, relying instead entirely on television for information, news, and entertainment? How many of them are swallowing the Fox line without being able to restate it in their own words? I meet them every day, and if they had learned to analyze what they read, they might now be able to question what they’re told, rejecting or accepting it as the content deserves. Introducting them to substantive reading through movies, television shows, advertisements, or cereal packets, might allow them to attain the ability to move beyond simple forms of communication to more grand and substantial texts. I assume Pell is a smart enough man to know all this. That being the case, his argument with the literature curriculum isn’t Shakespeare vs. a tin of tomatoes, but with the ideological content some literature may have, or – worse – the ideology of the analysis. This is fearful thinking and leads to book bans and other demonizing practices. It’s unworthy of an educated person.

Underground
The cross-city tunnel may or may not work to alleviate inner-city traffic congestion. Until people start using it, we’ll never know. However, there should be little doubt that people will use it. Anecdotally, those who avail themselves of the underground roads network appreciate the ease with which they navigate great swathes of the city they’re not otherwise interested in. What is normally a relatively dense area of backed-up traffic is for these few merely minutes of car-free cruising. M. and I, riding with our friend Kris out to Rushcutters Bay and a nice Japanese lunch in Paddington (Wasavie, very nice, too), stuck to surface streets and could see the effect the tunnel’s had: traffic jams up and down William Street and nobody much using the tunnels. For our jaunt, it wouldn’t make sense to pay the high toll. At $4 just for the cross-city, then, potentially another $4 for an outward-bound stretch beyond that, there’s little point unless you’re going to make use of the whole thing. And let’s not mention the e-tag-only requirement, which adds the burden of being perpetually out-of-pocket by at least $80. Still, people will use it in the end. Word will get around of the minutes-from-Darling-Harbour-to-the-Sydney-Cricket-Ground ease and so forth, and motorists will head in. The harbour tunnel, plus cross-city, plus eastern distributor combination will bring the traffic in over time, after which it will be “as above, so below”: everyone stuck in traffic.

Now That’s Leadership
What I love about the Labor party in its role of opposition is it’s always delightful tendency towards one-upmanship. Not content with Howard’s incremental approach to the removal of civil liberties, Kim Beazley is proposing vast new police powers, near martial-law levels of detention and investigation. (Maybe we really should pay attention to Mark Latham’s criticisms, before there’s no difference at all between the parties.)

Champions [Over] the West
Just stealing another Big Ten song: the Swans have their first Grand Final win in 72 years. (You'd think they'd sold Babe Ruth or something.) Cheer, cheer the red & the white.

Sung to the Tune of Notre Dame's Fight Song
Cheer cheer the red and the white
Honour the name by day and by night
Lift that noble banner high
Shake down the thunder from the sky
What though the odds be great or small
Swans will go in and win overall
While her loyal sons are marching
Onwards to victory

Some of the lines don't seem to quite scan, but so what? Go the Swanies!

Premiership Chances
The Swans had their chance to take their first premiership since moving to Sydney improve dramatically last night, when mainstay Barry Hall’s suspension was lifted, letting him play on Saturday in the Grand Final. Perhaps I’m too accustomed to a different standard of athletic violence. Watching the various football codes here has been a bit of an eye-opener. In both rugby and Aussie Rules, there’s no padding, no helmet more elaborate than’s needed to keep your ears attached, and a penchant for tripping and shoving just short of clotheslining your opponent that’s only just shy of pure mayhem. For all the talk of “king hits” and so forth, it’s a wonder there aren’t more paralyzing incidents, let alone career-ending injuries. So when Hall rabbit-punched St. Kilda’s Matt Maguire in the opening quarter of last week’s semi, it was an obvious tactical move. No official saw it happen at the time, and videotape review is rarely clear enough to make a substantive finding, as in this case. While I thought at the time that Maguire was bunging it on a bit, Hall’s punch was swift and deliberate and straight into the diaphragm. While it’s useful to have a policy of reducing the penalty for an early admission of guilt, and the offense occurred early enough in the match that you could say it made little difference to the outcome of the game, Hall’s excuse is an obvious lie (except for the line: “I wanted to make a physical impact on the game”), and he got off because this is sports-mad Australia and Sydney’s best shot at a Grand Final in decades. I’ll still barrack for the Swans, but this is no way to clean up the game.

Child Labor
With the industrial relations legislation changes yet to be announced in any detail, John Howard has commenced his war on labor with a drive against apprentices and trainees, setting a new federal-level commission in power over their wages, cutting them out from the awards system. While the commission won’t go into operation straight away, the government will in the meantime set the wages. Tightwad Howard can’t be expected to actually pay fairly, but this will surely allow lots more plumbers to hire school kids and welfare moms for dirt-floor prices. The university drop-out rate is not a valid argument for this move; it’s all about cheap labor in an increasingly struggling economy. But someone’s got to pay for those rising petrol prices, especially if Howard can’t get that rise in the excise he wanted.

Up or Down
Senator Harry Reid’s made his decision on John Roberts: he’s not getting Reid’s vote. As the leader of the minority party, this is bound to have an effect, but it’s not likely to block Robert’s ascension to the Supreme Court, a position he doesn’t deserve by anything I’ve read about the man. While he’s an experienced lawyer before the court, he’s not an experienced judge, having been knocked back once from an appointment to the federal judiciary, and only attaining a position there in the last couple of years. He may be relatively innocuous, but his arguments before the court have been suspect and his answers to many key questions during the confirmation hearings were, ultimately, dishonest. He won’t comment on cases he thinks he’ll have to decide during his tenure, but he will comment on others – but nearly all are as likely as not to come up, except Roe vs. Wade. His explanation is a dodge, and therefore a lie, and a judge who’ll lie isn’t worth the paper his law degree’s printed on. While Reid won’t mount a filibuster, we can still hope for a substantial “no” vote. Little enough consolation for having to live with another Clarence Thomas on the highest court in the land.

Cops
I’ve been a fan of the police procedural mystery novel over the hard-boiled detective ever since I first read one of the Martin Beck stories, The Laughing Policeman, perhaps the most famous of their 10-book series, having been made into a movie with Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern (hey, and Louis Gossett Jr, too; amazing the things you find out). Years later, after the Counsellor travelled to Sweden or anyway became friends with some Swedes, I found that locally Martin Beck’s pretty passé. Yes, the books are dated, but that doesn’t mean they’re not good. Just as mysteries they’re excellent, and the characters are marvellously drawn. Turns out, however, there’s another Swedish series, written by Henning Mankell, following police detective Kurt Wallender. A review of his latest, The Man Who Smiled (not yet published in the States or UK), has piqued my interest. The latest back home is Firewall, which I’ll be on the lookout for in the library.

Festivalia
Having enjoyed Little Fish so much, we took in an early session of the other notable current Australian release, Look Both Ways, which has won a prize in Toronto. M. and I both came away with serious reservations, yet somehow agree that in the end this is indeed a good movie. Neither of us thought the acting was particularly good, and even when it was, the lines given to the characters would be cliched. The animation and photo montage segments were only intrusive in the first fifteen to thirty minutes or so, when the director seemed incapable of letting them go long enough to let the story progress of its own, but were otherwise visually interesting, even stunning, and a nice device into the characters’ minds. The supporting characters, however, were generally briefly drawn and one dimensional or unlikable. As is the fashion lately, it’s a movie with intersecting story lines, like Grand Canyon and Magnolia and . . . I forget the other, more recent examples, but you get the ones I mean. Like those, it relies on artifice and is only as successful as its devices can make it. Yet somehow it ends up feeling bigger than the sum of its badly fitting parts. Maybe that’s the appeal of these kinds of movies: the synergy they create. The narrow field of play never feels small, and even the small-minded characters have their focus on larger things. I don’t expect this to do well in America, but it will likely, as in Toronto, do well enough overseas in general. While I think it leaves out a lot it would have done well to include, for a small budget production, it’s worth seeing.

NZ
I only started watching the New Zealand election this last week, and the tactics of the National Party there have been appallingly personal, attacking incumbent PM Helen Clark’s looks more than her policies. Under Clark, New Zealand has been independent and progressive, forging a path quite distinct from that of other western nations, notably Australia, so for all their troubles, they’ve also been quite admirable. The rise of a separate Maori Party was surprising, since Clark’s New Zealand has done much to support the rights of the indigenous population, rights very obviously under threat from the Don Brash’s Nationals (along with other things). That Brash has managed to secure what looks at this time to be 49 seats to Labor’s 50 (out of a total 120) is not surprising in this age, when so many are opting for a new, selfish conservatism, most successfully until these latter weeks under George W. Bush, if only because of his taking the Presidency of the world’s “last superpower.” In fact, Brash’s success looks even less anomalous purely in its antipodean context, where John Howard has held sway beyond Bush’s tenure, but with no less devastating effect on society’s commitments to its underprivileged members, and with similar “moral’ underpinning. A coalition appears likely with the Maoris, Greens, and Progressives, but they’re no less apt to opt for selfishness of their own than what the right wingers evince in their policies.

The Next Catalytic Converter
Joe Williams has a device that improves the burn rate in your car from 35% to 97%. It’s a hydrogen-generator that feeds into the engine and allows more fuel to be converted into energy, reducing emissions and corrosion, improving mileage by 10% to 40%. Is it the best of both worlds, good for the oil companies and for the environment? If nothing else, it could be the first positive step toward getting off the crude. (Via Metafilter.)

Union Now
I'm becoming less impressed than I was - and it was little enough to begin with - by new Senator Barnaby Joyce. He's talking deal on voluntary student unionism", but after the deal he caved in on over selling Telstra, he's starting to sound like his ambition has more to do with being the hammer his party uses to beat out noise than an independent force within the Nationals trying to get a good deal for his constituents, that is, no ambition at all: he's just a tool. Well, that's pretty much politics as usual here, isn't it? Only the party leader gets to make any substantial noise, usually, with everyone else just singing harmony. Until they're forced from the leadership, of course, after which they can say what they like.

Mutants Among Us
Man, this guy could be one of the X-Men, couldn’t he? I mean 30,000 volts of electricity. If he could control the discharge, he’d be all set for superhero stardom.

(Yes, technically, he’d be Electro, and have to become a villain, but them’s the breaks.)

Nobody Walks in Parramatta
Car culture begins in the Outer West, and Parramatta is the big-suburb demarcation point. This is where “auto alley” is, the strip along Parramatta Road – the main drag from the city out to the west – with what seems to be every car dealership in greater metropolitan Sydney. And car culture is typified by “hoons” – drivers with no skill but an aptitude for speed and noise and generally rather badly behaved. However, here in hoon heaven, the police have decided that the Church Street pedestrian mall is danger to itself and others and recommend that it be opened to automobile traffic. The council says that at night the mall is given over to derelicts, junkies (and let’s add the homeless, who are otherwise unspecified – but I’ve been there at night and can testify to who else is present) and is therefore unsafe and unattractive to – let’s face it – shoppers. The police are evidently helpless, since they’re recommending the change, and if there’s nowhere for these unattractive elements to be, the only people who’ll go there are patrons of the various retail stores and restaurants. Harold Scruby, pedestrian advocate and council gadfly, is actually recommending a “shared use” area, but I think he must be getting tired of always being knocked back. No, says I, keep the mall. If the winos and junkies are the problem, deal with them, address their problems effectively. Eliminating the mall only pushes the problem someplace else for someone else to address. Greenways and pedestrian precincts should be part of the social fabric of a municipality, not simply handed over for increased spending and taxation opportunities. What’s really driving this change? Given that Parramatta has just instituted metered parking up and down the main drags, could it be parking revenue? It wouldn’t surprise me.

Deported
Scott Parkin has been deported from Australia as a threat to national security. He’s a peace activist, whose worst crime was to dress up in a tiger suit and run around in Exxon’s offices one time. He came to Australia on a tourist visa, but was arrested just prior to conducting a workshop on non-violent protest and after he’d participated in a small demonstration outside the Forbes CEO Conference last month. The U.S. has no intention of putting him on a watch list or otherwise restricting or investigating him, and Australia has declined to tell anyone, including Mr. Parkin, any details of the reasons for his deportation. Over at Barista there’s a report that the government gave the opposition a private briefing, and that Labor has subsequently decided not to object. The comment by William Burrough’s Baboon that the government is having a trial run of its new anti-terror deportation provisions is a little extreme but not outside the realm of possibility. In any event, Mr. Parkin will be charged AU$20,000 for the privilege of not flying home on his own return ticket, but I’ll bet the Qantas food is terrible anyway. (Will they just charge is credit card, or send a bill? If he never comes back to Australia, and he won't be able to, can Amanda Vanstone really expect to get the money?)

Update: The bill's only AU$11,700: AU$4,235.03 for the flight (must have been first class - how nice; he probably came down in coach) and $6,675.39 for the cops who flew back with him (I guess they went coach, but they'd have had to stay sober, so the free drinks up the front would have gone to waste anyway). Why send guards along in the first place? Did they think he'd parachute out on the way? And if they'd used Flight Centre, I'm sure they could have gotten a better price. Typical government waste.

Habitat for Humanity
Democrats Abroad Australia is hosting a fund-raising effort in Martin Place tomorrow, 16 September, at 6 p.m., in conjuction with Habitat for Humanity to collect donations for the relief efforts in the Gulf Coast states post-Hurricane Katrina. I suppose, with Ophelia currently flailing the North Carolina coastline, there'll be more need than ever for the charity. Everyone's welcome - this isn't an ex-pats-only event. Check the website for more information.

Wrap
Last night M. finished shooting on her short film. What? M. had a short film in production? Yes, and I didn’t say anything about it, but now that major filming has ended, there you have it: a 15-minute short soon to undergo post-production. There’s ADR for one of the actors, editing, and all that, at which point it’ll be ready for submission to the festival circuit. Production so far has been much longer than it might have been, but the co-producer (M.’s role was not limited to writing the screenplay; she also cast the actors and extras – including myself, the only non-professional in the bunch – costumed the men, and gathered sponsors to provide meals, clothing, and some of the equipment) had consented to using her own home as the set, and the availability of some of the other crew was limited, forcing everything to be done on weekends, a schedule that got further extended when the cinematographer turned out to have run himself out to a ragged edge and had to limit himself to one day a week. Editing, for which the services of a professional in possession of a credit on an Academy Award-winning film have been engaged, will begin in November.

And before I say anything more, I think the screenplay is right up there, one of the best things M.’s done, so if the finished product lives up to the potential, it’s going to get some good attention out and about. It’s based on some research she’d done for an article back in NYC that was published on Salon.com on fetish salons.

The evening work ended once the exhausted actors ran through the final scene one more time, then again, then slower, then had stills taken, then just did some quick outdoor night shots; and then we packed up the gear and sent out for some Thai curries and spring rolls, which were great (by that time, it might hardly have mattered, but the food really was good). We sat around the table telling stories, relaxing, and getting into a fully jovial state until after 11, at which point we all realized just how tired we were and went our separate ways home.

M., of course, will see the movie before me, or at any rate the rough-cut edit, but eventually, late November, I suppose, we’ll have a screening for cast and crew and all the extras and sponsors and various helpers-along-the-way. Since my boss consented to appearing in a crowd scene, I might be expected to feel some level of anxiety over what she’ll make of it, but it’s not like I didn’t tell her the basic plot going in.

Book Report
I’ve finished reading Kafka on the Shore, the latest novel from Haruki Murakami, and while it isn’t quite the grabber The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was, it’s still, as usual, really good. It’s a bit sexier than usual, and also a bit more brutal, especially about a third of the way in, when some distinctly unpleasant things happen to the cats, a plot element Murakami thankfully dispenses with thereafter. Neither of the two central characters are ever brought into direct contact, which suits the alternating, third-person/first-person narrations, but instead, minor characters are used to thread the story together. The story is a lot more explicitly magical than other Murakami novels, and that’s not something I’m entirely happy about. Although it’s translated from Japanese, what I experience as Murakami’s distinctive style comes through. Whether it’s because of his prose being so readily translated or the translator is so adept, the novel, as usual, manages to be highly worldly, distinctly Japanese, and unique to the environment it creates for itself all at the same time. I’ve read a few other Japanese novels, but Murakami shows how well he’s mastered the form, well beyond anyone else I’ve read yet (although I hear Amy Yamada’s supposed to be good).

The Old Grey Lady's Retirement Fund
At US$50 a year, a subscription to the NY Times on-line would be cheap, except it's way more than I want to spend for on-line content. I'll make do with the stuff they post for free and look elsewhere for the rest.

Boycotts
The emails continue to arrive on the Day without Petrol idea (1 September in the States, as noted earlier). For Australia, it's going to be 22 September. I still don't think it will actually have a net effect, but why not do it anyway? With the price per litre going the way it is, it can't hurt.

Spring
It's a half a month off yet, but spring has come, if today's weather is any indication, despite Australia's calendric demarcation of the seasons, let alone any equinoxial (if that's a word) focus. Last I looked, we were 22c in the shade, and although the clouds were large, they weren't thick, so at its height the afternoon was well up around the low 70's: pleasant, indeed. This is the biggest problem in my life, well, aside from all the more mundane issues of money and so forth, althought these are related, after all, because what I'm talking about is how much, having come to Sydney and experiencing on a sustained basis, beach life, I know now how ready I am to retire. Bring it on, I say, but after the lottery win.

Better keep working.

Looting and Profiteering
Both are war crimes. I mention them, however, in the context of New Orleans, where President Bush is blocking the Red Cross from the city while allowing Blackwater, the federal contractors acting as mercenaries in Iraq, to go in, assisting in disarming and relocating the citizenry. He's also suspended the law requiring federal contractors from paying their employees the prevailing wage for the type of work performed in the area where they're operating. So any locals hired for the clean-up won't get a decent wage and volunteers aren't welcome. Good thing ol' horse-show Brown's back in D.C.

Australian Cinema
Next, we'll go see Look Both Ways, but rather than attending in chronological order of release, we skipped off to see Little Fish, the newest offering, starring Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Sam Neill, Martin Henderson, and Noni Hazlehurst, and marking the Australian debut (and for all I know return to screen acting) of 21 Jump Street's Dustin Nguyen. It's a remarkable cast in what might have otherwise been a small, intimate movie, but the quality here, not just in the performances, but generally,, is tremendous. Neill's always good as quietly evil, and Weaving is better in this than in pretty much anything I've seen him in before. It goes without saying that "our Cate' is excellent; she never disappoints. As M. pondered as we queued for entry, it will be interesting to see how this does overseas. It's right up there with Lantana, if not even better, more proof that when Australia gets it right, it does it up big. Rather than the slapstick and/or suburban comedies, Australian drama is unlike anyone else's, probing into ordinary lives in ways that Hollywood is too often too busy to bother over. This is one to be sure not to miss.

Deterrence
The PM is proposing some new laws to prevent terrorism in Australia, including sticking up surveillance cameras everywhere like they have in England, increased powers of arrest and detention, jail time for incitement, and fines or jail for leaving your bag somewhere. Other than the obvious decrease in overall civil liberties, which is especially worrying in the case of the arrest and detention proposals, I don’t think the cameras are an effective deterrent – they’re more likely to serve an investigatory purpose after the fact than to provide any particular utility beforehand – and the new luggage laws are, as Kim Beazley points out, ineffective – more likely to snare some harried family member trying to shepherd the kids through to the boarding area than anyone intent on wiring themselves up as a bomb. The net effect of these laws will mean more harassment of ordinary citizens and less interruption of business operations at airports and railway stations.

So it’s a jobs program. No, really: you'll need operators behind those cameras, first of all, then more lawyers for all the arrested citizens, more guards to cover the shifts for the longer detention periods - not to mention the increased handling requirements will mean building programs for more jails and a volume-based increase for service providers to law enforcement - and the airlines and railways will be able to handle more traffic because they're not so frequently disrupted by having to address lost luggage problems. The benefit to the economy will be immense, especially once the labor law changes go into effect and employee turnover goes into hyperdrive.

Breaking Quarantine
If there’s one food I love, it’s tomatoes, and if there’s one kind of tomato I love above all others, it’s one that actually tastes like a tomato. Whoever invented that ripening gas did a real disservice to the world, so I’m on the lookout for a way to grow my own heirloom tomatoes. First: get the seeds into the country. . . .

Free PC
Malcolm Turnbull, millionaire-turned-politician, would like everyone in Australia to have a free, lifetime email account. Of course, most of us already have one, at least if we’ve heard of Yahoo!, Hotmail, or Google. What we don’t have is free internet access, regardless of how “cheap” broadband is. And a lot of us don’t even have a computer. Yeah, it’s an “innovative” idea, but I don’t think Mal’s going to buy me a PC. I can picture him, however, as the next “Dell dude.” (If he is going to hand out computers, can I have one of these?)

Day of Prayer
While the Red Cross manages to provide relief to the Katrina refugees, and FEMA dithers, the Right Reverend George has announced a day of prayer next week, reinforcing his government’s two-pronged disaster-response themes: delay and empty promises. While the rest of the country – and much of the world, generally – has already included the Gulf states in their prayers, and have already moved into direct action, Bush and Cheney continue to make speeches and avoid answering pointed questions. I’m sure a lot of people will be comforted to know that people are praying for them, and it’s unworthy of anyone to question the power of prayer during times like these, but a lot more people would be a lot more comforted if they could get their hands on those debit cards or enrolled onto Medicare and Food Stamps and so forth. If independent aid organizations are managing the business of providing for these people better than the Feds, then I’m with Senator Reid: skip FEMA. Cheney’s answer on Michael Brown’s appointment neatly side-stepped the issue of qualifications, but I’d still be interested in what favors were being returned that put a horse-show manager in charge of such an important post. And what’s behind gas prices - which are growing even as far afield as Australia? Is this price-gouging, profiteering? With two oil men in the top spots, can the Federal government answer that? Maybe, if we can get an independent inquiry, we can find out. It would be a more worthwhile investigation than anything we got out of Ken Starr.

PAC
Some additions to the on-line political resources I’m tracking: Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Swing State Project are websites devoted to promoting Democratic candidates for re-election or to supplant Republicans, each a great place to help get people like Rick Santorum, that moral abyss, out of national office. Progressive Punch, along with Progressive Majority, are websites to assist in tracking and supporting progressive candidates as well as the voting records members of Congress and the Senate. And of course Democracy for America, the site Dr. Dean turned over to the greater good.

Old Man
When I read Jason Kottke’s Popcorn Hacks, I soon realized that I am an old, old man. Why does popcorn work? Because there’s a bit of moisture inside the kernel that, when it turns to steam, cooks the corn and bursts and outer membrane. Why does microwave popcorn work? Because it does the same thing as the application of heat: turns the liquid into gas. So for you kids playing at home that never cooked up popcorn on the range-top, you don’t actually need to “stir the kernels around with a spoon so they don’t burn”; just keep the pot moving, shaking the kernels. And you don’t need “protective eyewear so that when the first kernels pop, you don’t get hot butter-like liquid in your eye”; you just need a lid for the pot. The rest of the instructions are just like what we used to do as kids.

Ol’ Mess
Forced evacuation of the entire city of New Orleans is now underway. The mayor cites his power under martial law and claims the risk of fire and disease is too great to allow anyone to remain in the city, even in undamaged homes. Only 10,000 people are left, other than rescue workers, law enforcement, and Halliburton. Nothing Bush could have done – other than to have funded the damn levees – could have prevented this situation, it seems. I’ve heard reports that only the French Quarter, out of all the historic neighborhoods of New Orleans, may come through with its character intact. Rebuilding, getting the thousands of displaced residents back in their homes, is urgent.

Aid to the region is set to increase from $10 billion to nearly $52 billion, some of which is being distributed directly to refugees in $2,000-debit cards, to “get them some cash in hand, which allows them, empowers them to make their own decisions about what they need to have to restart their lives,” according to disgraced horse-manager and present head of FEMA, Michael D. Brown. Mr. Brown’s statement is expressive of the President’s attitude toward the situation and poor people in general: help yourself, because we don’t think we should have to; only morally weak people don’t have money. (For an example of this kind of thinking, both specifically within the Bush administration, and in the United States historically, last week’s issue of The New Yorker included an article on the health care system by Malcolm Gladwell that provides some great insights.)

Well, $2,000 isn’t going to get anyone very far toward rebuilding their lives. It won’t even pay for the period of time they’ll be homeless, let alone recompense them for lost wages. These people are going straight on the dole, many of them for the first time, and many will stay there for a very long time to come. Inquiries are all well and good, and while Bush can’t magically rebuild New Orleans or the devastated businesses that have supported the city, he can ensure that every effort is made to pump out the water, rebuild the levees, clean up the mess, restore the infrastructure (public and private), and subsidize the return of jobs. I only hope $52 billion will be enough – and that it’s actually spent where it needs to be. Aid packages are often more promise than substance, and the money often ends up boosting some corporation’s price-earnings ratio or lining some CEO’s pocket rather than feeding someone or putting clothes on their back.

While Bush couldn’t run an oil company or a baseball team (and hasn’t done much of a job with the national economy or a war, unsurprisingly), and Michael Brown couldn’t run a horse farm, they’ve got to run this reconstruction – not just for themselves, but for all the people of the Gulf coast. Lives were at stake before the storm; they’re still at risk.

Qualifications
Suddenly faced with a second Supreme Court nomination, compounded by the vacancy being the Chief Justice’s seat, the President went for the unexpected and named John Roberts, previously his choice to replace Sandra Day O’Connor, as his selection for the Rehnquist robes. I know the ABA has rated Roberts as qualified for the original appointment, but I’d seriously question his nomination as Chief Justice, so I’m glad to hear Senator Harry Reid calling for more time and additional scrutiny. The guy’s been a federal judge – a judge at all – for only a couple of years, before which he was an ideologically suspect government counsel and trial lawyer, albeit with Supreme Court experience. It seems a mighty big step up to make him the top dog at this stage. Of course, it represents an easy choice for Bush: he doesn’t have to attempt a more polarizing nomination either to the additional vacancy or separately to the position of Chief Justice, and by not naming Scalia to the post, as I suspect was probably the more generally anticipated option, he makes an end run around at least some of the opposition. Bush still needs to fill an empty seat, but he may think he can put up one of his wing-nuts without generating a filibuster, Attorney General Alberto Torquemada, for example.

Meanwhile, as the fallout from New Orleans continues, every effort is being made to minimize the damage, unlike the administration’s actions before the storm. Fresh from shoe-shopping, that death’s head Condoleezza Rice, along with fellow ex-Cold Warrior Donald Rumsfeld, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Bartlett, are touring the area in advance of Bush’s second visit, with everyone staying mum on any criticism levelled at them from the Democrats, but alongside a concerted push towards blaming the Democratic administrations of the city of New Orleans and State of Louisiana. While these latter are not without blame, we shouldn’t forget the mismanagement of Bush’s federal government. This is the administration that claimed to recognize the need for greater coordination between agencies, but which has, as much through cronyism in its appointments as in its fundamental antipathy towards direct government management of infrastructure and services, consistently failed to put in place the conditions necessary to ensure smooth operations, whether in military deployments or in response to natural disasters. It’s past time the “age of spin” came to an end; we cannot trust these people.

Grey Power
If the NSW Health Department is really concerned, there’s a simple solution to reducing the potential problems of recycling grey water: eliminate phosphates and salt from cleaning products. Growing up, I remember when Suffolk County banned phosphates, and half the housewives drove into neighboring Nassau County who hadn’t joined the ban (and where the water table ran downhill into Suffolk, making the ban somewhat less effective) to buy foamier soap. That didn’t last, as the inconvenience wasn’t really worth it, and, in the end, the non-phosphate stuff did the job anyway. The quantity of fecal matter entering the environment through grey water recycling would be negligible, and the e coli danger along with it, not to mention that it only requires the filtration of 3 meters of soil to clean out pretty much everything in a litre of water. I don’t have enough plants on the balcony to manage the run-off from my washing machine, or I’d be watering the plants a lot less often (and yes, M., I know I’m supposed to do it more often already).

Rehnquist Requiem
It's just one disaster after another: with Chief Justice William Rehnquist dead, there are now two open spots on the Supreme Court, one of them paving the way for Scalia to don the stripey robes. Roberts' nomination is sure to reach confirmation, even though he's pretty much a right-wing ideologue in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, and having supported, if not openly espoused, a variety of policies and political entities, including the former apartheid government of South Africa, and we've seen a lot lately of the kinds of extremists the Bush Administration wants to put forward for federal judgeships, as well as their callous indifference to the rule of law and international standards of justice. If their neglect and mishandling of New Orleans is any indication at all, and I think it is, we can only expect Bush to thrust the Supreme Court back into the judicial dark ages. I hope the Democrats in the Senate are getting ready for a fight.

How Not to Apologize
The Coalition now has two methods of apology: none at all, as pioneered by John Howard, and without even a veneer of sincerety, as practiced by Tony Abbott, who, after openly mocking John Brogden, then went on to pretend to offer offering an apology. How do people continue to take these creeps seriously?

Update: Leaving a message on the answering machine - when it's public knowledge the guy you insulted isn't even home, particularly - isn't an apology; it's a cop-out. Mealy-mouthed acknowledgements that what you did was "tacky" don't get the job done either. Didn't Tony Abbott's parents teach him any manners?

Since landfall, New Orleans has been a disaster area. It was already, of course, with its endemic poverty, and waiting to happen, too, with the reduction in funding for levee maintenance, not to mention that the evacuation plans relied on an every-man-for-himself scenario, leaving the poor to fend for themselves, a situation that has resulted in huddled masses in the Superdome and convention center, where there is no support to speak of and crime is running high, right along with all the other failures in services, such as fresh water and food supplies that the looters are working to supply, well, all right, some of them.

But where are the 30,000 troops? And will the $10 billion actually reach anyone who needs it? While some are callous enough to suggest not rebuilding, we are talking about people's homes, people's lives, that they've spent years trying to build up and maintain. Stories of the family that drove off to Disney World because they couldn't go home right away are poignant and heartwarming at the same time, but they don't give the true picture of what's happening back where the chaos continues its reign.

12,000 National Guard are on the way, but that's still a long way from being where they're needed now, let alone being the 40,000 requested. The Red Cross and various other aid agencies are doing what they can, but they're few in number, and we are talking about the richest, most powerful nation on earth, aren't we? We can do more than show up a day late and start spouting platitudes, offering fly-over assessments as if they meant something. I know Bush and Hastert didn't create the hurricane, but they're not helping; they're standing still and looking for ways to retreat. Compassionate conservatives? No such thing.